By Jim Rossignol on August 10th, 2011 at 8:16 pm.
Id’s lead design chap, Tim Willits, has been talking to Eurogamer about the “always on” thing. He said this: “Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected. If you have a juggernaut, you can make change. I’m all for that. If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome. In the end, it’s better for everybody.” Everybody except those people who aren’t online for whatever reason.
“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated. Or there’s something new you didn’t know about, and you didn’t have to click away. It’s all automatically there. But it does take juggernauts like [Diablo 3] to make change. I’m a big proponent of always connected. I’m always connected. Our fans are always connected.”
Except when they’re not, eh? I think he’s right about Diablo III being unstoppable, but it’s not going to make it any less annoying or intrusive. Also, I totally love it when an app or game I click on tells me to hang on for a moment, because it has to update before I can use it. That’s super, really. Great stuff.
10/08/2011 at 20:19 Sigvatr says:
What if I want to play it on my laptop on the train? :(
10/08/2011 at 20:24 ZIGS says:
You’re shit outta luck
10/08/2011 at 20:24 Askeladd says:
You’ll be the only human that is not connected to the matrix.
I hope you save my ass when it comes to that.
10/08/2011 at 20:30 Raiyan 1.0 says:
Boardgames, bitches!
10/08/2011 at 20:45 wisnoskij says:
Then obvious you are not someone that Id or Blizzard care about.
10/08/2011 at 20:49 Pardoz says:
Crack it. (Of course if you’re going to have crack it to make it playable, there’s no point in wasting your hard-earned on it – buy something good with the money instead. Or donate the equivalent of the price to your favourite worthy cause.)
10/08/2011 at 20:58 MikoSquiz says:
Hey, if you’re going to have to crack it anyway.. er.. nevermind. I said nothing.
10/08/2011 at 21:13 Drinking with Skeletons says:
“Then obvious you are not someone that Id or Blizzard care about.”
Exactly. Blizzard has an idea about what they want Diablo III to be–an MMO–and they don’t really care about what longtime fans might want or scenarios in which a potential customer might not be able to use their product.
Whereas other entertainment industries–such as TV or film–strive to make products that would please and are accessible to as many people as possible (which has its own problems, don’t get me wrong) the video games industry is driven by companies that demand that customers follow their instructions and “tsk-tsk” our shameful free-will (see Bioware’s response to Dragon Age 2′s reception).
10/08/2011 at 21:27 James says:
@Drinking with Skeletons
Exactly.
10/08/2011 at 21:37 jonfitt says:
But how can you possibly buy in game items from the Blizzard store if you’re on a train and not connected? You’ll be unable to buy things!
10/08/2011 at 22:27 Fierze says:
In norway we got internetz on our trains ;) And busses, and planes :P Diablo is gonna be played everywhere :D
10/08/2011 at 23:06 Carra says:
Modern countries have internet on the train.
Where do you live, africa? :)
10/08/2011 at 23:14 JFS says:
I don’t think so. Which countries do really have that? Norway is ridiculously rich, it isn’t the best example. I don’t know about the US, but for example in Germay, we have some WLAN hotspots in Intercity Express trains, but by far not in all (most of the time the air condition doesn’t even work, so…). Normal trains don’t have internet. According to Wikipedia, we’re the tenth most developed country of the world. Africa, huh?
10/08/2011 at 23:44 SpakAttack says:
Internet on trains in the UK is buggy and shit.
10/08/2011 at 23:51 malkav11 says:
As far as I know there’s no internet on any passenger rail in America. The bus company I occasionally use for interstate transit has finally put wifi on some (all? dunno) of their busses, but it’s super slow and shitty and certainly wouldn’t be usable for online gaming more complex than MUDs. I don’t know about the other, bigger bus company (Greyhound) but probably it’s the same at best. Local transit certainly doesn’t have anything of the kind.
10/08/2011 at 23:55 Nalano says:
@ Carra
“Modern countries have internet on the train.”
Further proof America is no longer modern.
11/08/2011 at 01:11 Xighor says:
Here in Poland I haven’t seen any train with internet connection and I’m in a train about 4-6 times/month. Alhtough some sources claim that such trains exist.
Well, Poland is 3 world’s country for many people anyway. ;P
11/08/2011 at 01:47 Whitechip says:
@Askeladd
I love you.
11/08/2011 at 03:48 TurquoiseTail says:
Australia here, no internet on trains for that matter…..
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11/08/2011 at 04:37 pizzapicante27 says:
Norway and Europe in general has internet, great now how about you think about a country that takes more space in a mapamundi than the head of a pin, here in Mexico we have internet everywhere but its kind of expensive and it not really that stable outside of the cities, (I kinda live far from the main servers).
So, yeah its piracy for us then, a shame a lot of my friends got Starcraft 2 and we where looking to play Diablo 3 online.
11/08/2011 at 05:47 Harkkum says:
From a Finns points of view this entire debacle of always-on seems silly. Even mobile internet connections are stable enough, and, indeed, you have your free internet connection on trains. I think that rather than blame the game companies for demanding that we have a stable connection why not turn to your local internet provider and ask for an explanation.
If a country with three reindeer and two people living in it can do it, shouldn’t it be all that much easier for those places where someone actually lives in?
11/08/2011 at 05:54 oddshrub says:
Trains and Busses have wireless internet in Denmark as well.
To be frank I think the last research I saw on the subject said that around 92% of all our households had broadband, and that was like 10 years ago. Today there you even have mobile internet from your phone which you can hotspot when you’re not in an area with free wireless.
Sometimes I think Scandinavia should just leave the rest of 3rd world Yurop behind!
11/08/2011 at 07:05 qrter says:
The ‘explanation’ will be something along the lines of “we’re doing GREAT! It MUST be something on your side” plus “you’re free to switch providers” (if your contract even allows that), but you the consumer knows that all providers provide the same service or worse. So your one option left is not have any internet connection at all, which just makes you disappear, as far as internet providers are concerned.
Or , you know, the game companies could lose the arrogance, realise that not everyone is on the same technological level as they are, and recognise that it’s actually pretty normal to be able to play a singleplayer game without a constant internet connection.
11/08/2011 at 07:18 cpy says:
Where the hell do you live when you dont have 3G internet on trains? We have it on every train route, highways and major roads. So you can be online!
11/08/2011 at 07:26 Zenicetus says:
@ Nalano: “@ Carra
“Modern countries have internet on the train.”
Further proof America is no longer modern.”
I’ll admit that the USA is behind many other countries in bandwidth and availability. However, I suggest this exercise to put it in perspective, because I know RPS is a Euro-Centric site and I don’t think y’all understand the infrastructure issues:
Pull up Google Earth, and take a look at your favorite European or Southeast Asian country that has fantastic Internet access. Zoom in so the country fills the screen.
Now, without zooming out, scroll over to the USA, and pan across the map. It’s a big country, people. The Internet access you get in the middle of Montana, isn’t the access you get in New York City. It’s not the same as building out infrastructure in a country like Denmark.
11/08/2011 at 08:19 Optimaximal says:
It’s much easier to fully cater for a country with a sparser population density…
11/08/2011 at 08:44 Fierze says:
USA still got higher population density than both norway and denmark so beeing a bigger country shouldnt mather.
11/08/2011 at 08:56 Makariel says:
@Internet in trains:
AFAIK the legislation in Germany is such that if someone downloads or does anything illegal looking with your internet connection you can get fined and sued. Thus no company with sane management would provide free access to internet since they don’t want to get fined to Narnia. The couple of hotspots you find are very restricted (even stuff like steam is often blocked).
In the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Italy there is no wifi on most trains either, only on high speed connections.
edit:
last time I used the ICE in Germany I couldn’t even find a plug to charge my laptop…
11/08/2011 at 11:07 Kaira- says:
@Harkkum
It definetly doesn’t seem silly to me. I live in Oulu, 6th largest city in Finland, and to hope that my internet connection won’t drop even once or twice per month seems folly. And don’t even get me started on mobile internets, they don’t have coverage everywhere and are really, really prone to disconnect you from internet.
11/08/2011 at 12:29 innociv says:
These rich folk all have 4g on their laptops and can’t understand what sort of poor unfortunate soul doesn’t have all such “necessities”.
11/08/2011 at 14:04 Nalano says:
@ Zenicetus
I’m aware that the European countries in question tend to be quite small. I’m also aware that Tim Willits is an American, which makes his statements doubly stupid.
Also, I live in New York City, and even in the heart of urbanized civilization, broadband can be spotty. ‘Course, our infrastructure is aging…
11/08/2011 at 15:35 Groove says:
This puts me in a difficult position.
I wasn’t going to buy Diablo anyway since I don’t like those types of games, but now I don’t want to buy it because you have to always be online.
Voting with your wallet is hard when you weren’t paying beforehand.
12/08/2011 at 00:18 malkav11 says:
I’d also add that America barely has passenger rail, which I find enormously frustrating as busses are slow and unpleasant and cramped, and flying is fast, unpleasant and cramped and ridiculously expensive. Also, air travel is now full of utterly ridiculous “security” hassles that do nothing to make me more secure. But when many parts of America do not have passenger rail service and those that do have all of one train per day (all of which route through Chicago eventually), it’s only rarely practical.
12/08/2011 at 02:06 Gargamel330 says:
No but seriously, how *would* you play Diablo III on a plane or train? There’s no room for a mouse on those little tray tables! Are you actually able to play something so mouse-driven using the touchpad?
12/08/2011 at 18:40 Synesthesia says:
it’s amazing how this forget scompletely about people who dont live in first world countries, believe me, we play videogames too, when the vultures are not circling our heads or while we are on a foraging trip.
I dont think a single southamerican country has 3g on the train, let alone a 5mbps connection for the onlive thingie. Rent servers for things like BFBC2 or now, BF3 are hosted very far away, giving us +300 ping for a service we pay, having to wait for EA to see if the clientbase is large enough to send a server southside. Most of the times, they send 2 or 3 to brazil, and have us fight over it.
This is why i’m buying red orchestra. We need to support the ones that actually look after us, not the ones who throw us scraps of a service and a bunch of intrusive conditions, and then ask us to thank them for it.
I dont even want to pirate this one. They can go suck a dick.
10/08/2011 at 20:21 killerkerara says:
My cable goes out for the fourth time so far this month. What joy, I can no longer play any games! Why do I own a computer again?
10/08/2011 at 21:44 Alextended says:
Yeah, it’s like these people think everyone’s home is as high tech capable as the Blizzard offices. I might wanna live in the country, for the peace and quiet, that doesn’t make me a hillbilly who doesn’t play games. I’d love to have super fast, unlimited internet with no interruptions anywhere and everywhere I may find myself, but since that’s not the case for 90% of the world, I’d rather not have games that require it. Assuming they’re not multiplayer-only, that’s just dumb.
More importantly, all the consumer benefits cited as part of this scheme, Steam and similar services manage to offer without actually making it a constant requirement (obviously leaving me without said benefits when I’m not connected). So why didn’t a journalist or whatever point that out? Even Diablo II had auto updating when you were actually connected online, requiring a permanent online connection isn’t related to any such benefits.
10/08/2011 at 21:57 Sleepymatt says:
^ This.
Presumably they think everyone has an industrial-strength huge mega-fat pipe tubing torrents of Internets directly in to every room in their house, and don’t give a toss about laptop-gamers. What a bunch of cocks.
10/08/2011 at 22:09 Hoaxfish says:
I live in London, and basically my crappy ISP left me with a randomly disconnecting connection for about 2 weeks…”always on… except when suffering from ISP/game server/etc failures”
10/08/2011 at 22:16 Baines says:
My DSL went out over the weekend due to a broken wire, and it was days later before it was fixed.
Thunderstorms can temporarily break DSL connections even if the storm isn’t particularly nearby.
Also, I’m in the country, which means my internet options are limited and relatively low speed. My “high speed” options are pretty much what city dwellers get offered as the low budget “low speed” choice, but I’d have to pay “high speed” prices to get it. And developers only assume greater and greater connection speeds, leaving me behind the performance curb for pretty much my entire online life at home.
10/08/2011 at 23:26 Kdansky says:
I can hardly believe that every single ISP in your area is this bad. They do not all compete for the lowest price segment though…
I’ll buy it, and I think it’s a terrific idea to ban single-player completely, because it will make the online-experience better. I can still write code on the train and read a book.
10/08/2011 at 23:31 Nalano says:
@ Kdansky
I can believe it.
There are basically two broadband providers on my tiny island. Time Warner and Verizon. Both have regular outages because of uneven maintenance. Both have highs and lows in terms of performance.
My tiny island is Manhattan. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like out in the sticks.
10/08/2011 at 23:42 Alextended says:
Dude, what? Your preference for single or multi player doesn’t have anything to do with the topic. Like, at all. They didn’t “ban” (lol?) single player completely, they just made it so you have to be online to play it. That doesn’t in any way make the multi player better. Blizzard didn’t say “Diablo III is now an MMORPG, there’s no single player to speak of” (for which there would also be negative reactions by some, but for completely different reasons to the current reactions) they said “Diablo III requires an internet connection whether you play by yourself or not” and id here didn’t say “we wish we could make Doom 4 multi player only” they said “we love the concept of always online games, multi player or not”. That’s what people are against. For now. If in the future everyone has free 10G on every device everywhere in the world then an online connection requirement will be invisible and thus fine with everyone. Though even that would still leave practices like EA’s (where they shut down the servers of a few year old games) in question and thus the online connectivity would ideally still be optional.
10/08/2011 at 23:54 malkav11 says:
And there are certainly no people anywhere on the planet for whom singleplayer is as important or more important than the online experience, and who play computer games in significant part because they are an interactive medium that works -without- other people. Certainly not on this very site.
11/08/2011 at 02:47 Kamos says:
Yes… certainly not. Wanting to play a game where there are no other people, only an AI, is clearly deviant behavior. A crime, even.
11/08/2011 at 03:05 Devan says:
There are definitely valid arguments about Internet availability and reliability to be made, but I think there’s even more important reasons to oppose this kind of online requirement.
Basically, it puts the customer in a situation where he has to rely on the ongoing service of others (both the publisher’s game servers and your ISP and everything in between) in order to use the product. That’s an inherent downside, because it’s adding factors that can render your purchase unusable.
Services require upkeep, which requires ongoing money flow. Someone has to pay to maintain services, and they don’t last forever. Further, a service operator is well within his rights to deny that service to anyone; so aside from the possibility of not being able to use your product due to downtime or the service being shut down, but it could also happen just because they say so. Keep in mind that “they” could be anyone from the game publisher to your ISP, and the reason could be anything from account inactivity to bandwidth overage, or nothing at all.
Of course that’s not likely to happen to any particular individual, but the fact that the dependency is there is a significant disadvantage. MMOs and other games that have no offline-capable content have no way to get around this disadvantage, and that’s fine. But when you take a game that does have single-player content and introduce this disadvantage as a requirement, that’s just unwarranted.
Time to vote with your wallets.
11/08/2011 at 07:35 Sheng-ji says:
Great post Devian, I say buy the game if you want it, but vote by downloading the inevitable crack which will allow the pirated copies to run without connecting. Sure you won’t get the benefits of the auction house but… wait, thats a plus too
11/08/2011 at 14:09 Nalano says:
@ Devan
MMOs also have a pay model commensurate with their services. D3 is not an MMO.
10/08/2011 at 20:21 Makariel says:
Another proponent of force-feeding gamers always on you say?
10/08/2011 at 21:51 Trousers says:
I dare say I am SHOCKED. Doesn’t Blizzard know that every gamer is living in their middle class parent’s basement?
(Which, sadly (fortunately?) I am at the moment, but I realize there are also people out there with self respect that play games.)
10/08/2011 at 22:03 Wulf says:
Or, you know… in a part of the world where the Internet isn’t quite as developed. Such as say… Brazil, where I have a friend whose Internet isn’t as stable as mine. But hey! Don’t let facts like that get in the way of mad tirades. Filthy, dirty people who live in less developed parts of the world shouldn’t be allowed to play games, am I right? (Despite him being one of the most talented, funny, and civil gamers I’ve ever met.)
10/08/2011 at 23:08 RF says:
To me, this article’s title was, “Id’s Tim Willits Wants You Not To Buy Id’s Games”.
10/08/2011 at 23:45 qrter says:
Or what if you’re in the armed services? The military tends to hold a dim view of open internet connections, if even technically possible.
11/08/2011 at 05:15 Psychopomp says:
I read it as ““Id’s Tim Willits Wants The Next STALKER to be the Torchlight 2 of Shooter RPGs.”
10/08/2011 at 20:22 FriendlyFire says:
“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated.”
Wait, what is it that Steam does if not that? I prefer mobility over having an update 0.1923 seconds earlier.
10/08/2011 at 21:05 WPUN says:
“Imagine picking up a game where features and game items are automatically removed. Or there’s something new you don’t care about, and you have to ignore the latest ad from the in-game store. It’s all automatically shoved up your arse. But it does take juggernauts like [Diablo 3] to randomly destroy good game experiences. I’m a big proponent of always connected. I’m always connected. Our fans are always connected except the ones that are not – so they must not really be fans. Amirite?”
There, fixed it.
10/08/2011 at 21:40 Urthman says:
Imagine trying to play a Steam game and being told, “Please wait while we force-feed you a 12 GB update.”
10/08/2011 at 22:47 Casimir Effect says:
I’m always torn as to whether I prefer the way Steam keeps everything up to date for me or the old days when I could apply patches at will.
For example, I find patch 1.04 for Dragon Age makes the game slow down terribly after about an hours play but patch 1.03 was fine. Originally I had the game on disc but I got the Ultimate Edition in a Steam sale so now no longer have the choice, meaning I need to restart the game many times if I have a long session.
I honestly think the old method would be better if developers and publishers were better at hosting the patches and thoroughly explaining what they did. It was often a pain to find the newest or intermediate patches, even looking on the developers website. Sometimes you just got sent to a Fileplanet link or some other site which demanded registration.
10/08/2011 at 23:17 Carra says:
To be fair, you can disable the Steam updates (right click on the game > properties)
10/08/2011 at 23:47 qrter says:
To be even more fair, Steam recently changed their system, so that you don’t need to redownload the whole game in case of some updates/patches, just the bits you actually need.
More than a bit late, but still – they seem to have fixed that.
11/08/2011 at 00:32 Casimir Effect says:
Being able to disable Steam updates is ok but it needs a rollback patch or patch selection feature to be really useful. I understand a lot of it is to ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to MP but then I hate all MP so reserve the right to be unjustifyably angry.
Boo, Hiss n’ Shit!
10/08/2011 at 20:22 razgon says:
Vote with your wallet people – thats all you can do.
10/08/2011 at 20:27 Keymonk says:
It’s funny because everyone’ll still get Diablo 3.
10/08/2011 at 20:33 Fumarole says:
I won’t be getting it with this restriction.
10/08/2011 at 20:43 LionsPhil says:
Enjoy your meaningless protest. You’re not even sending a distinct message from “I don’t like the game” or “I pirated the game instead” or “I don’t own a computer, what is a games”.
10/08/2011 at 20:44 Nalano says:
Not everyone, Key.
I don’t care if I’m “sending a message,” LionsPhil. Why do you?
10/08/2011 at 20:50 Wolfox says:
I’ll not buy Diablo 3, much as I didn’t buy Starcraft 2 for the exact same reason. I’m all for having a better experience if I’m online. What I can’t agree with is not being able to have any experience AT ALL without being online.
10/08/2011 at 20:53 Blackseraph says:
I won’t be getting Diablo 3.
And Lions how else are people supposed to tell blizzard that this is unaccebtable, they obviously don’t care about just words. And this protest would not be meaningless if enough people wouldn’t buy Diablo3 because of this say 2 or 3 million people. That would really get Blizzards attention.
But of course that is vain dream because people are morons.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 Derppy says:
The sad fact is that it isn’t enough for people to vote with their wallets. It’s a simple fact that it sucks and nobody likes is, but people will just accept it, because they don’t want to miss the experience.
I hate how gaming companies think they can beat piracy and decide to make the honest customers suffer. I’ll predict this game will be cracked and in top 5 most downloaded games of every single torrent tracker within a month or two of the release.
Such a shame Blizzard went this route with Diablo 3. Blizzard and Valve are pretty much the only big companies I trust to always make quality products and be nice to PC gamers, but Blizzard is falling to EA/Ubisoft level with their recent Diablo 3 design decisions.
I guess WoW makes so much money (Like 100 million each month?), that they can’t justify creating games without absolutely maximizing profits and getting steady income from them no matter how much the gamers hate it.
Lets say over 6 years WoW has had 7 million subscribers on average and each paid 40$ for the game and expansions. I’ll round the monthly payment to 10$.
That’s over 5 040 000 000 $, over five frikkin’ billion dollars. Similar sum would require quite a few sales from “traditional” games, even if every single gamer would pay 50$ for their copy, it would take 100 800 000 copies to reach similar sum.
I’m willing to bet that has a major effect when they are planning on something that doesn’t have monthly fees and that leads to horrible decisions which piss on the fans.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 Cyberwizard says:
This is exactly what I am going to do. I was planning on getting Diablo 3 but now I’m not. Torchlight 2 will definitely fill that void for me. And if id adds it to Rage, I’ll have Serious Sam 3 and Hard Reset to play instead.
And it’s not about protesting, LionsPhil. It’s about not giving my money to companies that pull this stuff. Will it stop them? Maybe, maybe not. But will I be playing a game that treats me like a criminal even though I paid for it? Nope.
10/08/2011 at 21:01 LionsPhil says:
If you are not communicating to Blizzard that you are not buying Diablo 3 because of the DRM, it will not get Blizzard’s attention that it is losing sales because of DRM.
Even if it sells poorly, which it won’t with that kind of brand power and the huge body of people who don’t know/don’t care/only find out after they bought it and have already given Blizzard their money, without communicating anything to Blizzard this is indistinguishable from it just being a bad game, or that PC gaming is dead due to pirates, or that action-RPGs are a dead genre and they should have made it a cover-based shooter.
“Voting with your wallet” alone is not an effective way to try to enact change.
10/08/2011 at 21:11 WPUN says:
Who are these “wallet people” you keep talking about?
10/08/2011 at 21:12 banski83 says:
I dunno, a simple email explaining why you were going to buy the game, but have since decided not to after hearing about the always-on DRM might be a better way, or at least in addition to not actually handing over the money, might be the best way. Send a message by actually, y’know, sending a message?
10/08/2011 at 21:21 Angel Dust says:
While not buying Diablo 3 will probably not send Blizzard a message, buying Torchlight 2 or Grim Dawn instead, when you wouldn’t have before (this is what I’m going to do; I like a little bit of hack ‘n’ slash but one game is enough to tide me over for a while), will definitely send a message to those devs. I can see the likes of Runic Games getting some sales from all this, not enough to concern Blizzard but it’ll sure make a difference to Runic Games.
10/08/2011 at 21:22 Brise Bonbons says:
It’s true, I’m unlikely to change Blizzard’s behavior by withholding money – but I can damn well make sure that money goes to companies making games I respect, and with business models that treat me fairly.
By giving that money it to an indie developer (or several, given how much Blizz games cost these days) that makes games I actually want, I’ll do my part to ensure I have that choice in the future.
Certainly sounds better to me than throwing up my hands and shouting “welp, guess I can’t do anything, may as well just give up”.
Of course, this is easy for me because I have no fondness for the Diablo franchise, and prefer other games in the genre anyway (I’ll take any opportunity to mention Din’s Curse as a much smarter take on the whole idea). But I think the principle holds true – you can’t reliably change a corporation’s mind via punitive measures (piracy, boycotts), but if you save that money to use as positive reinforcement for a superior rival, you’ve done your part to improve the business space and give yourself better options as a whole.
And what more could we hope for, really? If only we could have a similar impact on politics…
EDIT: Angel Dust said it more concisely than me, really. Bravo! And I dunno how effective sending emails is, but it can’t hurt – I just doubt they’d get enough to care given the millions and millions of copies they’re still likely to sell. I think it’s a given they’ll win more sales by openly legitimizing gold and item farming than they will lose due to the DRM, for example.
10/08/2011 at 21:31 James says:
“Certainly sounds better to me than throwing up my hands and shouting “welp, guess I can’t do anything, may as well just give up”.”
That feeling in the general public serves any group that is already established, especially when they have interests that don’t play well with your own interests.
You always have a great many options in front of you, if you ignore the list of options you’re being given.
10/08/2011 at 21:34 Blackseraph says:
Do you really think people at Blizzard are so stupid Lions?
They have been criticized for this very much, I am sure they could tell that this one thing that no one liked at all is best possible explanation why their game does not sell.
10/08/2011 at 21:43 alilsneaky says:
I won’t get it.
Fuck the message, I just don’t want it when I can’t play it on the train or on family visits.
My budget is limited, plenty of places to spend it, this is not one of them anymore.
I’m not a child, I can go without my toy or find a new toy.
10/08/2011 at 22:06 Wulf says:
Ahahahaha… no. Fuck that. I’ve not touched a Blizzard product since the heart and soul of Blizzard left for ArenaNet and Runic Games, where great games are still being made, as opposed to the dessicated husk of once-Blizzard which seems to be churning out one pile of shit after another.
Not touching this. I feel for the people who want to play it and won’t be able to, I really do, but personally… I’m not touching this.
10/08/2011 at 22:27 TillEulenspiegel says:
This year, I’ve spent a shamefully large amount of money on PnP RPG books, most of them small press. And a bunch on indie PC games. Almost none on AAA games.
I’m pretty happy that my money is going towards helping the segments of industry that I like to grow, supporting games I like and often people I like. Buying good stuff and telling your friends is voting with your wallet in a meaningful way.
10/08/2011 at 22:32 MrNice says:
I like the argument that D3 is too big to fail, worked well for the economy.
10/08/2011 at 22:53 James says:
Nice point, MrNice. Not totally relevant assertions, but I feel they share the same spirit of thoughtlessness and wishful-thinking.
Everything dies, even big things with lots of money. It just takes longer in some cases.
10/08/2011 at 23:20 Nameless1 says:
I’ll do.
10/08/2011 at 23:26 Nalano says:
+1, MrNice.
10/08/2011 at 23:26 CaspianRoach says:
@Derppy
No, not really. I don’t think it will ever be properly cracked since all item generation happens server-side. Plus a bunch of other content no doubt. Just like there are no good WoW cracked servers, there won’t be any reasonable d3 as well, since crackers would have to write server side completely from scratch.
11/08/2011 at 00:09 droid says:
There is a reason I haven’t bought Starcraft 2 and will not buy the expansions. I am already one of the always online and yet will not be purchasing Diablo 3. As far as quality is concerned they are excellent games well worth purchasing, but the devil is in the details. They will succeed without me but I don’t want to be involved.
11/08/2011 at 08:33 Nick says:
Personally I’ll just enjoy the money they saved me, don’t really give a fuck about the game after all I have heard about the mechanics and now this. I have no doubt they’ll be swimming in money from the in game shop where they take a cut, I can only hope other companies don’t follow suit but really there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it.
11/08/2011 at 09:12 godgoo says:
I wont be buying Diablo 3 because I never played a Diablo game, it looks dated and janky and I just dont understand the hype.
11/08/2011 at 15:30 0p8 says:
reply fail
10/08/2011 at 20:22 acidtestportfolio says:
hey tim willits
we already have the thing where the games automatically update
(it’s called steam)
10/08/2011 at 20:30 WMain00 says:
Very true, but guess what, the pa comic is right. People will still buy it despite complaining. The industry can continue to churn out garbage and the masses will still feed upon it.
10/08/2011 at 20:40 Nalano says:
People will also not buy it because this isn’t worth it.
You can say “people will” do whatever. We’re not all one bloc and It’s not written in stone.
10/08/2011 at 21:20 James says:
I’m not going to buy it because of the always on part.
Anyone is free to tell me otherwise, or claim I’ll be in a minority that will be ignored by anyone who matters. The best part about my position is that it doesn’t give a shit about those people.
10/08/2011 at 22:07 Wulf says:
Bullshit. There are still some gamers out there with integrity.
11/08/2011 at 00:04 malkav11 says:
The Penny Arcade comic is a simplistic, insulting and dismissive waveoff of a genuine issue. Not, I will grant you, one with the gravity of many other issues facing us in the world today, but one which certainly would kill gaming for quite a few people – myself among them – if Blizzard getting away with this signified to other companies (like id) that this was acceptable behavior.
Tycho’s post does leaven things somewhat, but I bet that side of things isn’t going to get passed around like the strip. Bleh.
10/08/2011 at 20:25 Raiyan 1.0 says:
It’s so amazing when people who want to suck me dry of cash wants to decide what is best for me.
Go fuck yourselves.
10/08/2011 at 20:45 Kittim says:
Sometimes its good to write a post detailing why something is wrong and giving a sensible counterargument.
This is not one of those times.
So yep, totally agree.
10/08/2011 at 21:47 othello says:
This sums up my feelings exactly.
10/08/2011 at 22:44 thehollowman says:
I mean pretty much. This isn’t about quality user experience or blah blah, this is DRM. It’s the same thing Ubisoft do, except Blizzard want to tell us it’s actually to help us this time! Eff that.
11/08/2011 at 00:05 Lemming says:
Says everything I’m feeling, certainly.
11/08/2011 at 06:31 Shuck says:
It’s not even so much that they’re “decid[ing] what is best for” us (which is bad enough), but that they’re telling us what the circumstances of our lives are (that we “all” have internet all the time). That’s really infuriating.
11/08/2011 at 13:27 malkav11 says:
Ubisoft tried to tell us it was for our benefit too. It’s just that no one was buying it.
11/08/2011 at 17:38 adammtlx says:
Socialism?
10/08/2011 at 20:27 BreadBitten says:
Stopped caring about the game after this little farce anyway…
Also, has anyone else noticed that offline play in ‘StarCraft II’ is totally fucked since the last “patch”?
10/08/2011 at 20:40 Nalano says:
I didn’t notice because I can’t bring myself to play it.
10/08/2011 at 21:14 banski83 says:
Yeah, I was without internet for a fortnight, wanted to play offline SC2, and it came up saying I couldn’t play offline, as I wasn’t online and it couldn’t dial home.
Well, duh.
10/08/2011 at 21:34 Azradesh says:
Worked for me last night without any issues. Sometime it does need you to unplug/disable the connection. Also you need to have been connected to battle.net in the last 30 days.
11/08/2011 at 00:06 Stormbane says:
Use a crack when you want to play offline and you do not half to worry about any restrictions.
10/08/2011 at 20:28 Askeladd says:
We should all try to be strong and resist them.
Too late, I already own steam.
too weak.. to… *urg*
10/08/2011 at 20:46 Teddy Leach says:
You OWN Steam? :O
10/08/2011 at 21:03 Jeremy says:
Gabe?
10/08/2011 at 21:45 alilsneaky says:
This is now about us asking Gabe newell things.
Gabe when will half life 2 ep 3 be here!
10/08/2011 at 20:28 Hexidecimal says:
Yeah Steam does that already so… It also has an offline mode. The reasons they keep throwing out for this keep getting more absurd. There is no good reason for this at all.
10/08/2011 at 20:40 Zenicetus says:
Steam’s “offline mode” has a big Catch-22. It assumes you’ll know in advance when your service won’t be available, because you can’t go into that mode unless you’re already online. That’s nice if you’re traveling with a laptop, but it’s no help at all when your Internet provider suddenly goes dark for a few hours, or half a day, without warning. Steam locks up just as tight as a game with a constant connection DRM.
10/08/2011 at 20:46 megalomania says:
You don’t need to know in advance; if you’re not connected to the internet and you start steam it will automatically go into offline mode.
10/08/2011 at 20:46 Gar says:
@ Zenicetus
That’s why I always keep Steam in offline mode unless I decide I want to download/install a new game or am aware of a very helpful patch. An easy solution to your “Catch 22″ problem
10/08/2011 at 20:57 BarneyL says:
I find the biggest problem with Steam’s off-line mode is that is doesn’t work and hasn’t ever across the five different PCs I’ve tried to use it on.
10/08/2011 at 21:01 Dominic White says:
I’ve used Steams offline mode on every PC I’ve touched in recent years, including a laptop from 2003 with wonky wi-fi. If it can’t connect, no problem.
10/08/2011 at 21:23 James says:
@BarneyL
I think you’re doing it wrong.
10/08/2011 at 21:32 Kaira- says:
In my case the offline-mode has been a bit wonky – works sometimes and sometimes doesn’t. It would seem that offline-mode doesn’t work if my computer is connected to my home network, which then again isn’t connected to internet.
10/08/2011 at 21:33 Zenicetus says:
@ Gar: Staying offline except for patch updates is an option, but you’re still dealing with Murphy’s Law and human fallibility. Back when I had a much shakier connection than I do now, I wouldn’t always remember to go into offline mode as a precaution after grabbing a patch update or playing online multiplayer. And of course, that’s the time that Murphy will kick in, and leave me with a dropped connection and no way to launch Steam.
10/08/2011 at 21:53 wererogue says:
Yeah, you’re screwed if you want to go into offline mode when the game you want to play knows that it has an update already.
I still don’t get why you can’t play the old version while it’s downloading the new, even in *online* mode.
10/08/2011 at 21:56 DarkNoghri says:
Fun note from the Steam client beta:
- Fixed offline mode not working if there was no remembered password.
They do still patch offline mode every once in a while to try to fix things, at least.
10/08/2011 at 21:59 gwathdring says:
I’ve never had problems getting it to work. The only issues I’ve had are with games that always try to store information in the cloud. In some games, profile and save game information will appear to be working only for all of my progress to vanish when I’m next in online mode. At least … I think that’s because they always want to store information in the cloud. I’m not actually sure. Wait a moment … that happened with Fallout 3 and Arkham. Is this a GFWL thing? I should test it more systematically and figure out which games do it.
I should probably also ask Steam support about that, it’s the only reason I don’t use offline mode more often.
11/08/2011 at 00:08 Lemming says:
if it helps, I’ve had problems with offline-mode on Steam.
Turns out it doesn’t like it if it was already trying to download a patch for a game then you go into offline mode and try and launch the game.
If you are going into offline mode with everything sitting there idle though, it should be fine.
11/08/2011 at 02:11 Kamos says:
I’ve had trouble with Steam’s offline mode for a very long time. In fact, I never bought a game there until it suddenly started working for me.
I don’t know why it doesn’t work for everyone. When you tell people offline mode doesn’t work, they don’t even understand what you’re talking about.
I’ve heard (and this might be wrong) that one of the reasons why it won’t work sometimes is because you’re connected to a router and somehow Steam detects that you have a connection to some other device (even if you’re indeed not connected to the internet) and it tries to go online… and tries… and tries… forever. So maybe pulling the plug helps? I really don’t know.
11/08/2011 at 04:09 daf says:
@Hexidecimal Steam updates games by replacing the game files with the new versions as it downloads them, so your game has files from two different versions as the update is running as as such would likely crash or cause save corruption if you tried to run it, new update system is supposed to download a set of changes and only apply them after you exit a game which should improve on the current system but I’m yet to see a game use it.
@wererogue you can go to the game properties and enable “don’t keep this game updated” to try and avoid that issue.
@Kamos you got most of it right, steam is pretty stubborn when it comes to trying to connect, so if you have your pc connected to some kind network with a router were the internet is down it will try “forever”, best way is to disable the network card temporarily to launch steam or use the less technical approach of unplugging the cable, without any network interface up steam will prompt for offline mode immediately, just be sure to enable “remember my login” before you do it.
11/08/2011 at 07:58 Mattressi says:
The secret to getting Steam’s offline mode to work is to take the ethernet cable out of your computer (or the router – either end is fine). Even if you have no internet connection up and/or have taken the phone/internet cable out of your router/the wall, just having your PC connected to a router/modem is enough to make offline mode not work. That’s what my problem was for ages. Once you’ve taken the ethernet cable out, offline works perfectly. Also, once you’re in offline mode, you can reconnect the ethernet cable (so you can see when your internet’s back up or so that you can LAN).
10/08/2011 at 20:28 WolVenom says:
“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated.”
Or imagine Steam that gives you automatic updates and also allows offline play.
10/08/2011 at 20:29 herschel says:
Disturbing. Veeeery disturbing.
10/08/2011 at 20:29 jti says:
The worst thing about this is that people want Diablo 3 so much that they take any kind of crap just to have it. I’ve seen it in the comments here and I guess almost everyone will forget “the ban” as soon as the game comes out. Not me though, if all big games become like that I just stop playing them. You have to draw the line somewhere.
10/08/2011 at 21:12 briktal says:
Gamers already accepted it with Guild Wars.
10/08/2011 at 21:17 Kaira- says:
Wait, are you implying that Diablo 3 is comparable to a MMORPG?
10/08/2011 at 21:26 James says:
@briktal
No, they didn’t. I’ll let you figure out why that is on your own.
10/08/2011 at 21:29 Brise Bonbons says:
Seriously. Guildwars only became even possible to play solo in the last couple years – it was always intended to be a group – and online – only affair through the first couple campaigns.
Whatever, not going to bother with more than that…
10/08/2011 at 22:19 gwathdring says:
Why do people keep comparing Diablo III to Guild Wars? It’s uncanny … I swear I’ve seen three different people mention Guild Wars specifically. They’re completely different games.
10/08/2011 at 20:30 Daiv says:
Surely the automatic online updater is but a figment of this future-man’s fevered imagination.
10/08/2011 at 20:31 Roi Danton says:
Quite amazing that bloke He wants my money and tells me that I as a staunch single player person have to be always connected. Well, fuck you.
Steam has at least an offline mode.
10/08/2011 at 20:32 Dominic White says:
I have an all-singing, all-dancing 20meg line. I can pull down multiple HD video streams simultaneously. I can download multi-gig games from Steam in under an hour.
It STILL futzes out a couple of times a day. So fuck you, Blizzard, I’m not buying your game because you assume that everyone has a 100% stable internet connection. Also YOU’VE ADDED REGION LOCKING TO PC GAMING WHAT THE HELL!?
(Also, why is no site actually making a fuss about that? Have we really given up on an international internet?)
10/08/2011 at 20:41 Unaco says:
I have a (comparatively shitty) 2 meg line, ADSL. It also drops out at times… sometimes only for a minute, sometimes longer… up to 20-30 minutes. And sometimes, it drops out for half a day, maybe even a whole day.
And that’s just my connection… What about their servers? Are they going to be 100% reliable, always on, from now into perpetuity? People still play Diablo II (I know people that still play Diablo I), 11 years after it was released. Will the servers and all the functionality still be there in 10 years time? And if they patch the online connection requirement out, will the ‘full game experience’ still be available… they keep telling us how great the always connected stuff is.
10/08/2011 at 21:01 mihor_fego says:
As a former WoW player I can guarantee you that the servers will not be up 100% of the time. Every time there was a patch, hotfix or random login server fuckup, there were issues that lasted from minutes to hours. Remember, this is a game that people actually pay monthly for, which should mean optimal services. What about a game that isn’t supported monthly by millions of subscriptions?
10/08/2011 at 21:08 zergrush says:
Yep, that’s the real problem to me, as most of the people I want to play Diablo with are on different regions. Having everyone buy the same US / Euro version would be an easy way to get around it, but it’s simply a ridiculous and unjustified restriction to have in the first place.
I’m hoping Path of Exile and / or Grim Dawn are awesome enough that we end up not wanting to get DIII anyway.
10/08/2011 at 22:04 gwathdring says:
Forced patches and connection requirements do make planned obsolescence possible with computer games. Want to sell a new game? Kill to old servers. Problem solved. Same with online multiplayer, I suppose, but most of the games I play are pretty good about legacy support. I’m worried about BF2 though. It’s had a good run, but EA seems to like shutting down multiplayer.
11/08/2011 at 00:15 malkav11 says:
I personally care only a bit about the online requirement in terms of worrying about my internet going out or playing on the go. I should be able to play it under both circumstances and it’s not at all acceptable to behave otherwise. But ultimately I don’t anticipate regularly having an issue with that. It’s the way that I would -have- to have access to their servers to play. It’s a foolproof killswitch to prevent people from ever playing the game again if Blizzard should ever feel like taking them down. It’s also vulnerable to hackers (I’ve lost a WoW account to a hacker getting it banned and Blizzard refused to even consider my case), arbitrary bans, or bans that have a legitimate basis in multiplayer bad behavior but shouldn’t affect one’s ability to play by oneself at all. I honestly can’t think of a single advantage for players that could possibly be worth the potential to lose the ability to play at all.
10/08/2011 at 20:33 HermitUK says:
Reminds me of Carmack saying Rage wasn’t going to have dedicated servers on the PC two years ago, and that MW2 was going to pioneer that and make that the norm on PC. And while it’s a fairly common feature of console ports now, pretty much every P2P game (Save MW2 as it has the player numbers) has basically died multiplayer-wise on the PC. Likewise, D3 is too much of a juggernaut to be massively damaged by this, but if other titles attempt to follow suit they’ll suffer for it.
10/08/2011 at 20:34 Julio Biason says:
It’s amazing how this is bringing a lot of weasel words from developers.
Blizzard can’t stop saying “you reached level 20 or 30 or 40 and decided to play with your friends. Then you have to start over and that’s bad”.
Now id says that “Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated”.
Why can’t have a little dignity and say out loud “It’s our DRM.” And it’s obvious that Tim Willits means “Yeah, if Diablo 3 is a success, then it means everyone can use that DRM.”
Weasel words. Everybody someone from the game industry says anything about Diablo 3 “always on”, it’s weasel words.
10/08/2011 at 20:41 MrWolf says:
It’s worse than just DRM. It’s Blizzard forcing players who will only play single player to use the “Auction House” where you can spend cold, hard, Real World currency on items. With the always-on connection, they can pull the plug on your account and your character if you try to use a trainer or equipment editor to tweak your character out. Of course they’d prefer you to buy gear in their auction house where they keep a % of every purchase. This is the same company that made millions on a $25 mount (http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000942).
10/08/2011 at 20:59 smoke.tetsu says:
He has a gerbil face so more like Gerbil words than weasel words ;)
10/08/2011 at 21:39 Azradesh says:
Please, they aren’t forcing you to use any AH, but yes, they sure as hell want to tempt you. I sure this is the biggest reason, rather then DRM.
11/08/2011 at 05:56 Urthman says:
Blizzard can’t stop saying “you reached level 20 or 30 or 40 and decided to play with your friends. Then you have to start over and that’s bad”.
This is such a bizarre talking point for a game in which randomized dungeons and endless replayability are practically the core mechanic.
If starting over with a new character in D3 is a chore instead of a delight, then I’d say they’ve completely failed to deliver a game worthy of the name Diablo.
11/08/2011 at 13:30 Shark says:
Yeah in that light it sounds like Diablo 3 will be a grindfest without replay value
10/08/2011 at 20:35 Evoc says:
Im sure there’ll be some sort of offline crack, its sadly what some people will have to resort to to be able to play : /
10/08/2011 at 20:35 bluebogle says:
I keep hearing soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan complaining about these always on setups. A lot of them play PC games while on break, but don’t have anything like always on connections. It’s just spitting in their faces with this stuff.
10/08/2011 at 21:09 WPUN says:
Pass on the meme: Why does Blizzard hate our troops?
10/08/2011 at 22:02 James says:
They don’t hate them, they just don’t care about them.
“Blizzard doesn’t care about our troops.”
Still, I’m torn…the more of them playing games, the less of them actively firing real guns, missiles or whatever deadly shit they have (at any given point in time). On the other hand, I don’t think it should fall on game developers to distract killers from killing.
If you were offended by this comment, please let me know, as your opinion is important to me.
10/08/2011 at 20:37 markcocjin says:
Translation:
If people love your game well enough, you can force them to do what you want them to and they will thank you for it. Because we know what’s best for you all so just shut the f*ck up and eat it.
10/08/2011 at 20:43 Nalano says:
Eat it.
Off the floor.
After I step on it.
10/08/2011 at 20:47 LionsPhil says:
It worked for Valve to use Half-Life 2 to get everyone onto Steam.
Before the apologists show up, bear in mind that early Steam didn’t even half half of the “bonus” stuff like screenshots it does now—IIRC even the social friends malarky was badly broken on release for a long time. It was pretty much just DRM and autopatching, and autopatching predates Steam.
10/08/2011 at 22:40 gwathdring says:
I wholeheartedly agree. Which is why it was a very long time before I bought my first non-valve steam game. I played Counter Strike (original and source) and I played Half-Life 2, and those only after I’d tried Steam out on friend’s computers and at LAN cafés and found it not to be too kludgy or restricting for my needs. It wasn’t until Mass Effect first went on a major discount sale that I bought my first non-valve steam title.
Steam had plenty of issues, but it didn’t require a constant connection. It has since become an incredibly usable and friendly platform for thousands of games.
It’s a nice little anecdote, but it doesn’t change the issue: players like being able to have access to their games on the go. Blizzard and Wilits are implying that gamers have some sort of an obligation both to themselves and the industry to get over this little fantasy that games need to be playable offline so we can all move forward. This is ridiculous. The Internet certainly deserves a centralized place in our society, but we also need to be careful. Private companies still control most people’s access to the Internet. Most American households don’t have access to a reliable, speedy, always-on connection–and I assume the same is true in many parts of the world. The sorts of wireless connections so many devices are using are incredibly insecure. And yet we’re moving towards movies, music, books, games and even basic software that requires a consistent Internet connection. We are trying to force a technological revolution we aren’t ready for.
Now I should probably scale back a bit to get on topic. I play games offline quite a lot. I have wholly embraced digital distribution, and certain types of on-line authentication. But a good half of the time I play games, I am either entirely offline or using a weak, unstable, and insecure wireless connection I won’t trust for anything more than webcomics–let alone my entire Steam catalog. The rest of the time I’m at home or school with a stable, speedy, always on connection or a stable, relatively secure wireless connection. Relatively.
I don’t want to play online games most of the time, and the reasons for keeping most single-player games online do not interest or convince me in the slightest.
10/08/2011 at 22:57 Nalano says:
Hey, LionsPhil, do you work for EA?
No?
Then stop flakking for ‘em.
10/08/2011 at 23:11 Kaira- says:
@ Nalano
Whut.
10/08/2011 at 23:14 Nalano says:
Just a bunch of “Just accept it; you know you’re addicted anyway” posts to reply to.
10/08/2011 at 23:59 LionsPhil says:
I have no idea what you’re on about.
Even if you’ve pulled some notion that I think people should buy into this crap out of thin air, that’d surely be being on Actiblizzard’s payroll, not EA’s.
11/08/2011 at 00:08 Nalano says:
Well, to be fair, they probably have enough money to simply hire us all.
Hey, that’d be a great way to resurrect their cache with gamers: Creating a whole wealth of jobs by mass-hiring PC fans!
11/08/2011 at 00:46 Kamos says:
I used steam when it first came out and it was awful. Really, really, REALLY awful. Heavy, no options, buggy as hell…
Later on I tried steam again but I couldn’t use it. Why? The offline mode was not reliable. In order to enter the offline mode, it tried to get online (herp derp). This only happened to me, it seems, since all my friends were puzzled by this. Still, it was a long time before it would work for me. I didn’t buy a single game from Steam before offline mode worked right. That’s how much I value offline mode.
10/08/2011 at 20:37 crinnycow says:
Haven’t the pros that Tim Willits mention been a staple of modern PC games for the past, I don’t know, 7 years? They can be applied IF the gamer is online but should not FORCE the gamer to be online.
10/08/2011 at 20:38 Zenicetus says:
Classic example of someone who lives inside a high-tech bubble, constantly surrounded by stable high bandwidth connections so they’re blind to the problem. Either that, or it’s just someone willing to shed a significant part of the potential customer base for their games, in return for ironclad copy protection. Probably a little of both.
10/08/2011 at 20:38 Adekan says:
I honestly don’t understand all the rage and angst about this decision. Of the announced D3 changes/additions this one did not even manage a murmur on my radar. Not only will it provide better security against hacks, which as anyone who played D2 online for more than 5 minutes can attest to were pretty prevalent, but it’s something you probably won’t even notice. Personally, I never played D2 offline for more than a few minutes.
Even though i’ve lost a lot of faith in ActiBlizzard since the downward spiral of WoW casualisation I still plan to pick this game up at launch, just because of the strength of D2′s multiplayer, which was honestly more of an afterthought than a fleshed out thing for them. I can’t wait to see what they do with it, with all of the things that they now know.
10/08/2011 at 20:43 MrWolf says:
You’ll sure as shit notice it when you’re in the middle of gang-raping Diablo and you kick your Ethernet cable out of the wall in excitement.
10/08/2011 at 20:43 Spider Jerusalem says:
Think about 10 years from now. When a game you really like but wasn’t that successful has closed its servers down. You stumble across the disc (lol yeah right who uses discs but the point remains) and think: “boy, I’d really like to play this game I love and paid for, too bad [SCHLOCKY PUBLISHER #42] closed down their servers which of course had all my data and the only way to play the game held in its fickle techno-bosom.”
10/08/2011 at 20:47 Adekan says:
Given that Blizzard is still; to this day even, running the Diablo II Battle.net servers, I honestly don’t think that argument holds water. Hell, I think the D1 Battle.net servers might still be running even.
10/08/2011 at 20:47 Jason Moyer says:
So basically you’re saying Diablo 3 won’t be successful. Or that the online-always thing won’t be hacked 3 days before the game comes out, making any future inability to activate the product completely moot?
10/08/2011 at 21:05 Rhin says:
@MrWolf:
How is that different from Diablo 2? I get dropped from the game just as well, unless I’m playing single-player. And Diablo 2 single-player characters were already lower-class citizens.
10/08/2011 at 21:13 DK says:
“How is that different from Diablo 2? I get dropped from the game just as well, unless I’m playing single-player, in which case I’m not “gang-raping Diablo with a group of friends”
Big shock – there is NO single-player in Diablo 3 anymore. It’s Multiplayer you’re playing without anyone else. You can be sitting at home, raping Diablo on your own, and boom it drops you, because you can’t connect to….who again? Diablo? Did he have to buy his copy of Diablo 3 as well? What happens if his internet hiccups?
10/08/2011 at 21:36 karry says:
Pesonally, i never played Diablo 2 online for more than a few hours.
We had a self-made neighbour network for me and 5 friends, and there we played lots of stuff, but online ? Fuck that !
10/08/2011 at 21:38 Spider Jerusalem says:
@Adekan
Of course it holds water. For every Diablo backed by a mega-giant, there would be dozens of other games from companies that folded or no longer felt like supporting their product was in their best interests.
10/08/2011 at 21:42 Azradesh says:
I’m sorry, but an offline *option* has no bearing on online security. And some of us don’t give a flying monkey’s arse about multiplayer Diablo.
11/08/2011 at 00:22 malkav11 says:
Sure, Blizzard might run Diablo III servers until the cow level comes home. Maybe. If I were going to trust a single company to both survive for many decades longer and continue to support servers for their older games for their entire lifespan, it would probably be Blizzard. They succeed big and they’ve got a proven track record of that kind of support. But the past does not guarantee the future, and there’s no reason I should need to place that trust in them to begin with when singleplayer games have operated perfectly well for decades without running off company servers.
And make no mistake, for many people Diablo has always been a singleplayer experience. It certainly was for me.
10/08/2011 at 20:39 Daniel Klein says:
This change is inevitable. Eventually, technology will catch up and we WILL be online from anywhere–in the army, while in Spain, in our trains, on our planes, even in a hospital for the insane(s)!
With apologies to Dr. Seuss.
10/08/2011 at 20:49 Dominic White says:
See, I’ll have no problem with always-on DRM when I can actually be always on. Except that technology isn’t quite up to that level yet, so I think I’ll just stick to other games until then.
10/08/2011 at 20:55 Mman says:
“Eventually”
The important part, I think “always online” games will probably become the norm at some point, but I think it’ll happen naturally when Internet connections become so solid and ubiquitous it’s not even something people have to think about; that’s not anytime soon (and, barring some revolution, by “soon” I mean 30+ years).
11/08/2011 at 00:25 malkav11 says:
I will be fine with always-on DRM when high speed, 100% uptime internet permeates every air molecule on the planet and every game that uses it is permanently hosted on nonpartisan servers owned collectively by the human race as a whole without any way to turn them off or ban people from accessing them. Also with 100% uptime.
Somehow, I’m not seeing that ever happening.
10/08/2011 at 20:39 TehMadness says:
Fuck, I’d love for a permanent connection. But I don’t have one, whether it’s offline whilst we move or because I’m moving about on a laptop. As soon as you start throwing in stuff like this, people are gonna get fucked off. I’ve never been a proponent of piracy in regards to games… but I’m starting to think they have the right idea.
Hell, I might buy the game for the license, and the pirate the game to get rid of the horrible DRM.
Or that would have been my tactic for another game. Seems they’ve found a way around that too. Yay for inconveniences!
10/08/2011 at 21:02 Jumwa says:
Ugh, I hate it when people say they will buy a game to ease their conscience then pirate it anyways. You’re voting with your money. You’re telling the makers and publishers of that game, in the only way they understand, that you approve of what they did, and here’s a butt load of cash for it.
Vote with your wallets people. If this issue affects you or means anything to you at all, just vote with your wallets. It’s the only thing a company understands. Everything else is just us venting or, worse, encouraging them.
10/08/2011 at 20:40 bigblack says:
Huge iD fan, here. Been playing their games since DOOM, and I’m really looking forward to RAGE.
To Tim Willits: if you were to try pulling this required-connection shit with an iD game, it would be the first iD title I refused to purchase, and the last time I’d consider doing business with your once-fine company until it’s gone. Yes yes, I’m sure you’ll not weep long and hard over this single lost sale while tripping over your other millions on the way to the bank, but it will still be true.
10/08/2011 at 20:50 jon_hill987 says:
It won’t be one lost sale. I make two and there will be more.
And I also own just about every id Software game released so far as well.
10/08/2011 at 20:40 Spider Jerusalem says:
Fuck absolutely everything about his statement.
NO ONE WANTS THE PC TO BECOME A CLOSED PLATFORM.
10/08/2011 at 20:48 LionsPhil says:
The people who develop software for the PC do.
Fear the App Store, the Web Application, and the always-on DRM. They are the tools of those who want to undo the personal computer revolution, and put us back in the shackles of someone else’s mainframe.
Repent!
10/08/2011 at 23:04 James says:
It’s more the people that sell/publish/fund games that want this, not the developers. Some of the former won’t want it and some of the later will, but that’s a good generalization, given their separate and distinct interests (in most cases).
10/08/2011 at 20:40 Fazer says:
This just proves how disconnected from reality Id developers are.
10/08/2011 at 20:42 Jason Moyer says:
An interview with one of the founders of Id proved that? That’s pretty amazing.
Edit: I swear it said Blizzard no less than 30 seconds ago.
10/08/2011 at 20:52 Shuck says:
It’s not just ID, it’s a common developer problem that they assume they’re 100% representative of their audience. Hey, they’re always in front of an internet-connected PC, so everyone else must be!
10/08/2011 at 21:17 Dervish says:
I would not call Tim Willits one of the “founders” of id, though he is certainly an important figure in the company’s history.
10/08/2011 at 21:39 karry says:
“he is certainly an important figure in the company’s history.”
He was lead designer on Doom 3. I think that tells exactly how uncreative and dull that guy’s thinking is.
11/08/2011 at 07:05 StuffedCabbage says:
“Important figure in the company’s history”…I think he’s a fucking idiot.
I know thats not productive to the argument, but I feel much better.
10/08/2011 at 20:40 felisc says:
… i liked him better in masters of doom.
10/08/2011 at 20:41 Jason Moyer says:
I’m only connected just long enough to complain about being online.
Actually, I hate the always-online thing, too, but whatever. If people had just accepted the perfectly reasonable and nearly invisible securerom one-time activation/never-need-the-disk-again solution that EA was using a few years ago maybe we wouldn’t have to deal with this garbage. Or maybe it would be worse.
Oh, and Id, I can imagine having my games automatically update without having to do anything. It’s called Steam, and doesn’t require me to be online constantly.
10/08/2011 at 22:32 ankh says:
So you think they stopped using Securom because people didnt accept it? Whats to stop people from not accepting this always on shit? Doesnt make sense to me.
10/08/2011 at 20:42 Teddy Leach says:
“Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected.”
WHAT ABOUT WHEN MY CONNECTION CRAPS OUT YOU MORON?! WHY DON’T *YOU* GO AND MAKE ISP’S ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THEY CAN’T TURN YOU OFF OR HAVE CONNECTION PROBLEMS?!
That feels much better. Sod it, I wasn’t going to buy it anyway.
10/08/2011 at 20:43 Turin Turambar says:
Pity he doesn’t have good reasons to back up the argument. The only reasons he does have already can be done without a mandatory always-on system.
10/08/2011 at 20:44 AlternatePFG says:
Honestly, wasn’t too interested in Diablo 3 anyway. I do like action-RPG’s but it never really caught my interest. Now I’m certainly not buying it, if only because this gives other developers the idea that it’s okay to pull shit like this. Outright boycotting is silly though, an official boycott is going to end up like the MW2 and L4D2 boycotts.
10/08/2011 at 20:46 Freud says:
I’m not all that bothered about Diablo III requiring players being online. I always considered it a multi-player game. And yes, I realize D2 a decade ago was a single player/multi player game.
But when single player games force it, it serves no purpose other than introducing another possibility for customers getting screwed.
10/08/2011 at 20:46 Demiath says:
So far I’ve not heard a single “always on”-positive developer even so much as briefly touch upon the reality of the actual Internet access which most human beings are stuck with (as opposed to the ideal world which these developers pretend exists). I for one will probably never be too bothered with always on requirements – since my connection is very reliable and fast and since I never play PC games while away from my home – but even for me it’s painfully obvious that a constant online policy simply cannot be reconciled with today’s technical infrastructure.
11/08/2011 at 00:29 malkav11 says:
Or with preserving gaming history.
10/08/2011 at 20:47 ShadowBlade says:
Hmm.. I’ll probably buy and play D3 simply because it looks like something i’d like (especially after D2). And since there are not that many really good games to choose from. I try to look at the game as a game, despite whatever the publisher/biz guys put in the path to obstruct it. This stuff isn’t very pleasant though..
But, as a developer I wouldn’t put this kind of thing in a game. I wish the game players in the company made the decisions and not the lawyers/biz dudes who have never played a game.
10/08/2011 at 21:06 Shuck says:
I’m sure the decision was made by developers at Blizz for very practical reasons (they wanted people to be able to bring their solo-play characters into groups without cheating being an issue and being always-connected was their best solution); they just didn’t think about the audience being any different from themselves. They assumed that everyone would be in front of a PC at home, with internet access, all the time. Which is ironic, since the Diablo 1/2 developers actually considered the fact that the audience wasn’t necessarily hard-core gamers like they were, and that was a factor in the two games’ success. These developers also didn’t consider how it would look to players: the always-on seems like a form of DRM (which it is, obviously, but probably not by design), and the cash auction house seems like a money grab, but they were probably just thinking about how they had to provide support for all the people who had been buying D2 items off Ebay, and that it would be less of a headache to just do the cash transfers themselves.
10/08/2011 at 21:45 ShadowBlade says:
As someone who grew up playing either SP or MP in LAN (never online), this does suck. I’m sure i’ll like the game, but gone are the days when you can just play a game with your small selection of friends in the same room :(
Also, it was nice being able to mod some elements of the game for you LAN play (doubling the number of monsters for instance).
11/08/2011 at 06:42 Shuck says:
I played a fair amount of D1 and D2, and never once played it online. It looks like I’ll be giving D3 a miss.
10/08/2011 at 20:49 Kill_The_Drive says:
I’m so going to download Diablo 3.
10/08/2011 at 20:49 metalangel says:
Your “interests” as a company do not ever supersede those of your customers. Without customers, you don’t have a company any more.
It has been suggested on Eurogamer that this persistent and brazen gouging and mistreatment of gamers is going to bring about a second crash. Look at THQ: MX vs ATV canned, after the recent installment failed to sell. It felt like half the game was missing, waiting to be purchased as DLC.
10/08/2011 at 20:50 Persus-9 says:
I don’t have much of a problem with Always On coming in at some point, connections are getting stabler and there are other games I can play offline or books I can read when my internet goes down. However I have a big problem with this sort of constantly updated disposable gaming that Willits is pushing.
I like to own games. I like to have games that don’t change. One of the things that pisses me off about Steam is the fact they can update your games and never let you have the product you original bought back.
I treat games as art and it pisses me off when after I’ve bought their work the artist feels they have the right to break into my house and add a few more brush strokes. There haven’t been many examples as yet but I can think of at least three: (1) Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble updated the art for their characters and in my opinion far worse. (2) Far more famously, Popcap removed a certain zombie from Plants vs Zombies because Micheal Jackson’s estate was threatening to sue them. (3) Terraria fixed a “bug” a few weeks back which increased the enemy spawn rate and made the whole game far more combat orientated and less to my taste. I’d far rather they couldn’t do this. I’d far rather I could keep my games just as they are if I like them the way they are and not have them automatically patched into something new that I don’t like as much.
It seems to me Tim Willits is promoting a view of games as fluid constantly updating and ultimately disposable things which I’m diametrically opposed to. Fine multiplayer games are like that because relying on other people makes them that way but when it comes to single player games I want to be able to go back in ten years time and play the exact same game I originally did if I choose to. Always online, constantly updating and ultimately entirely in the hands of the publishers is exactly what I don’t want.
10/08/2011 at 22:15 wererogue says:
I dream of a world where Steam is really a package management system, and where people can leave comments on each version so you can browse for one that suits you.
11/08/2011 at 05:35 Urthman says:
I’d love to try playing the original TF2.
10/08/2011 at 20:52 Vinraith says:
Yep, I fully expect to have to stop buying AAA games altogether at some point. Fortunately, you idiots aren’t the only show in town anymore, Tim.
10/08/2011 at 21:03 StingingVelvet says:
I really feel like I’m on borrowed time, like the next year of mainstream gaming might be the last I can support, or the next two years. It might end up being a lot longer than that of course, but as everything moves online-only, toward social networking and toward complete corporate control I will have to start buying less and less.
Least I will get new Deus Ex, Bioshock, Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect games.
10/08/2011 at 21:10 Vinraith says:
In compensation, though, I really do see the indie market picking up the slack more and more. Fewer and fewer of the games I care about in a given year are coming out of the AAA publishers these days, more and more of them are through smaller publishers and direct-from-developer independents. I really think that, for a lot of us at least, the AAA’s are just going to DRM and Facebook themselves right out of relevance.
10/08/2011 at 21:44 Brise Bonbons says:
Spot on Vinraith!
I feel this way about pretty much every industry these days. Books, movies, comics, music, games – hell cars and fashion – most have thriving indie scenes through which passionate creators can get their stuff directly to passionate customers. I think TV is the only industry with a good, creative mainstream scene right now…
Sure, there are still some good mainstream products coming out, and there’s nothing wrong with supporting those products. But there are so many amazing indie options out there these days, I really don’t feel like I’m missing much by passing over the crap that the big corporations are trying to feed us.
We just need to make sure we get enough money to the good guys to keep them producing new work. The huge multinational media corporations can keep pushing their shit all they want, and the majority of people will buy it, but it doesn’t matter as long as we still have options.
That is, don’t give up, fight the power, yadda yadda peace brother woooo.
10/08/2011 at 23:02 Nalano says:
Preach it, brother Vinraith!
Damn, I haven’t seen a Hollywood movie in a theater in a long while, and I don’t miss ‘em. (I think the last was the first Hangover, and that’s only ‘cuz the theater doubled as a bar.) I haven’t bought the album of a mainstream musician in a long time, and I don’t miss ‘em either. Somehow I still watch movies and listen to music.
These few companies do not own the media. They are not a cabal. We do not need to support them.
11/08/2011 at 01:09 Burning Man says:
All this is further reinforced by the absolute crap shown off at E3, where the only major reveal was….. *drumroll* Halo 4, Aside from a rather unnecessary reboot of a much-loved franchise, done purely out of greed, every other AAA title shown was a sequel. Same old, same old.
A few mainstream games still show some promise. Arkham City and Skyrim are still on my radar, especially since they subscribe to the “50$ Free-to-Play scheme” pioneered by Serious Sam 3, where you pay 50$ and then are free to play the game. It’s a shame not too many other companies see the value of this revolutionary strategy.
11/08/2011 at 17:42 InternetBatman says:
The one problem I have with that is RPGs. It’s really hard to make a good RPG on a small budget. Age of Decadence has been in development forever and Double Bear looks like its years away from progress. That pretty much just leaves Jeff Vogel and a bunch of RPG maker games. Don’t get me wrong, both are fun but maybe not competitive with AAA studios.
10/08/2011 at 20:53 Stellar Duck says:
Why not just have a launcher before the game starts that tells you if there is an update? Then you can get it if you feel like it. And if the computer is offline then the launcher just doesn’t check. I could have sworn that I’ve seen such a system in action. And by all means, when you sign on to a multiplayer component, then you can see what version I have. For my single player game, I don’t need that. I can manage it myself, thank you very much.
Besides, it’s not like developers these days deliver amazing support. I have plenty of games that really could do with a patch to sort out some stuff. Funny how it doesn’t happen.
And whatever he and ActiBlizzion says, my connection is not stable. My router dies from time to time and my ISP throws a fit every so often. I’d hate for that to happen in a single player game.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 Kefren says:
I hate where this is going. Many people say Diablo 3 will sell anyway – not to me. There are loads of Diablo-like RPGs on GOG, and I still haven’t played the one’s I’ve bought in their sales. They are DRM free, play offline, perfect. I didn’t buy Starcraft 2 because of all the accounts nonsense and lack of LAN, I just play Starcraft 1 regularly instead.
I have to say, I don’t even want autoupdating. By the time I get round to playing a game (usually a few years after release) I just download the latest patch. Or in some cases avoid it. I don’t like autoupdate when it changes aspects of the game that I liked. E.g. I play the original Plants vs Zombies with Michael Jackson in. I prefer Portal without the changed ending.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 titan13 says:
I wonder how much data this DRM will use up because i’m on a 2GB a month dongle plan (I cant get a landline internet connection where I am staying). That and my connection sometimes getting very laggy means I dont know if im going to be able to play this. Also it being auto updated really isn’t a big deal imho, I never minded w8ing for Diablo 2 or warcraft 3 to update. Its a very small inconvenience. But it might actually stop me from getting the game…
10/08/2011 at 22:48 iniudan says:
2GB a month ? Damn, sorry for you, but I have to say it, that suck.
I admit I would be unable to work out on an internet connection with such limitation these day, to the point I would think I might just be better without an internet connection at all.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 UW says:
I find this incredibly annoying. It’s one thing being honest about this and saying you want to promote “always connected” DRM in order to force people to pay for your game, but to imply that this will in some way improve the gamer’s experience is absolutely ludicrous and insulting. If it were for a reason as simple as that, you could have it as an option.
Oh, yeah. Because always-connected DRM is totally requirement for that feature. You couldn’t just have the game detect when you’re online and do all that shit, and otherwise just not do it and let you play the game anyway.
10/08/2011 at 20:54 DuckSauce says:
My “want” mode is not on for this game.
Thus:
“Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected”
Not me, keep thinking you’re so amazing in a world filled with litteraly thousands of videogames, I don’t think I’ll be the only one not buying this and not accepting “always on”.
I don’t think I’ll ever accept “always on” even if I did have a game that has it, because there will be a time I won’t be on. Then. RAGE!
10/08/2011 at 21:02 Rhin says:
Diablo 2 did it very well in theory — just separate the characters into online-only realm battle.net accounts and anything-goes single-player / LAN / open battle.net accounts. The “open” system would become a wasteland of hacked and edited items and characters but the battle.net ladders would be insulated from that.
11/08/2011 at 12:43 Zarunil says:
But if they allow offline-mode with hacks and item editors, they lose bazillions in revenue from their cash shop!
Forcing online-mode has little to nothing to do with wanting a better user experience. It’s all about wanting to control the consumer:
#1: DRM. This one is obvious.
#2: No stat- or item hacks. All items and stats have to go through Blizzard’s servers, meaning far more people with more money than brains will inevitably use their cash shop or buy from the player-driven auction shop (in which Blizzard takes a cut, IIRC) to gain an advantage.
They could have made online connectivity an option. They deliberatly chose not to, hoping it would raise their profits.
10/08/2011 at 21:06 Dawngreeter says:
Fuck him and fuck this.
Yes, I know this isn’t very productive. I don’t care.
10/08/2011 at 22:38 ankh says:
Yeah I agree, fuck them.
Personally I’m going to solve this problem by pirating this game.
10/08/2011 at 21:06 ResonanceCascade says:
More like Tim Witless, AMIRITE?
I understand why this is appealing to developers, but it’s basically just another unnecessary tether. If Tim and Blizzard hadn’t noticed, video games and computers are becoming increasingly mobile, not increasingly locked in to place.
10/08/2011 at 21:07 g33kz0rd says:
Like SC2, they are not cutting all the “Playing while off “”feature”"”.
You will sure can, with a entire new offline profile. ( or I hope so )
10/08/2011 at 21:50 Azradesh says:
I’m afraid not, they’ve said very clearly that there is no offline mode of *any* kind. At all. Ever.
10/08/2011 at 21:12 Conor says:
Well, he is a silly man, and he has my pity.
10/08/2011 at 21:13 dtskull says:
This is just going to create even more piracy. I believe that people already know whether they are going to legally get the game or not. What’s going to happen when blizzards servers crash? The first thing people are going to look for is a way around the internet requirement so they can keep playing at that specific time. At this point blizzard is pushing paying customers to turn to piracy tools etc. Which in the long run is a lot worse IMO.
11/08/2011 at 16:11 0p8 says:
hit————>nail————>head.
10/08/2011 at 21:14 Zogtee says:
What concerns me is this defeatist attitude. Yes, D3 is a juggernaut. It will sell a sheeytload of copies and a lot of people will gladly embrace the always-on requirement. There’s no point in complaining, just shut your mouth, hand over your money, and shuffle along, matey!
Still, there are people who will refuse to go along with it. People who are now tired of Blizzard’s shenanigans and will stop supporting them. The majority would like to pretend those people don’t exist, but they do and I think their stories are more interesting, than the conformists who will hand over their balls along with their wallets and smile while doing so.
10/08/2011 at 21:24 mihor_fego says:
Sadly, this will come to pass eventually. I know there’s a lot of people that will refuse to buy this game in protest, as was done with Ubisoft games. That number though is really too small to make a point across when total sales are calculated. Does anyone see Diablo 3 going below 10mil sales? How many are those boycotting? Even a hundred thousand is insignificant to Blizzard. Hell, Ubisoft didn’t get the message with smaller titles, will Blizzard care?
10/08/2011 at 21:28 Azradesh says:
“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated. Or there’s something new you didn’t know about, and you didn’t have to click away. It’s all automatically there. ”
What? Like every game with a launcher and every game on steam? Funny, they still seem to manage an offline mode. Nothing anyone has said is *any* reason not to have an offline *option*. Yes, I would play it mostly online, why wouldn’t I? But give me the damned option!
10/08/2011 at 21:30 Will Tomas says:
All I’ll say is this is exactly what loads of Hollywood studio bosses said about 3D cinema and Avatar. They aren’t looking so clever now. This will have it’s time, and be gone in a couple of years.
10/08/2011 at 22:36 Sassenach says:
I think the comparison with 3D cinema is an apt one, Mark Kermode had this to say about it:
“Beyond that, however, 3D exists not to enhance the cinematic experience, but as a pitiful attempt to head off piracy and force audiences to watch films in overpriced, undermanned multiplexes. It is a con designed entirely to protect the bloated bank balances of buck-hungry Hollywood producers. It is not a creative leap on a par with the advent of colour or sound, as demonstrated by the fact that the so-called “3D revolution” has already faltered on several occasions (the first 3D movie patent was filed in the 1890s and studios pushed the format in the Fifties, Seventies and Eighties to little effect). I know it, you know it, but fewer and fewer people are able to say it thanks to a multimillion dollar campaign which has fostered the lie that only wonky-eyed old farts don’t get 3D.”
The similarities are striking. Don’t you think?
10/08/2011 at 21:31 Pointless Puppies says:
What a disgusting comment. He’s glad that Blizzard is throwing its weight around to hoist unwanted bullshit tactics like this on the consumer? Is he insane?
All the “advantages” he talked about are present right here on Steam, and you can go offline at any time you want. All you need is a download manager running in the background that installs and runs updates as soon as they’re made available. You do NOT need to have the entire game connected every single second you’re playing. It’s complete overkill and does nothing but be a burden to the consumer.
What a pathetic display. Blizzard here is grabbing every Diablo fan by the neck and forcing them into whatever capricious system they want while Willits is off on the corner cheering them on because they’re the only ones with the power to do it.
10/08/2011 at 21:33 nootron says:
God, i don’t give a shit about it being online. For 60 bucks, if I can get a great dungeon crawling experience, then awesome. Why people are turning this into a quasi religious issue is beyond me.
Im sorry you won’t be able to mod D3, and you won’t be able to play it on a plane, or during a power outage. And there are 6 people on the other side of the digital divide living somewhere in Kansas who won’t be able to enjoy D3. My heart goes out to them.
But the other 99.999999999% of us who a) are always online anyway and b) are paying a tiny percentage of our disposable income for what im going to guess is somewhere around 100 hours of entertainment should all just suck it up and stop whining.
Just consider the bar you’re setting for this game for a moment and ask yourselves if you aren’t perhaps taking this all a little too seriously.
10/08/2011 at 21:51 Brise Bonbons says:
It’s like this:
Diablo 3: 100 hours of fun, has XYZ features, company wants my money, but treats me like an idiot and a pirate – that is, thinks they can decide what I want better than I can.
Torchlight 2 (or whatever other option you like): 100 hours of fun, has ABC features, company wants my money, treats me like a savvy customer with important desires – and a brain. Is probably also cheaper.
Which one do I give my money to? Of course, this might vary depending on whether one game has a must-have feature that I really want, but none of the features Diablo 3 has been touting even come close for my money…
10/08/2011 at 22:01 The Magic says:
Hi, I apparently represent 0.000000001% of consumers.
I would like to ask if i may live in your ivory tower where you swim in riches and have internet juices spewing from the walls.
10/08/2011 at 22:22 Sleepymatt says:
“For 60 bucks, if I can get a great dungeon crawling experience, then awesome. ”
The important word in that sentence is “IF”. IF your internet connection doesn’t bug out, then you can enjoy your $60 worth. IF it does, that’s a mighty expensive pile of useless 1′s and 0′s you just bought.
10/08/2011 at 22:28 wererogue says:
Clearly it is not cool to stand up for the marginalized.
This argument comes out for almost every issue raised on RPS. It’s weird and tired, and even more irrelevant in this case where a lot of the people who are upset just plain don’t *want* to be forced on to the Blizzard servers for one reason or another.
10/08/2011 at 23:06 Nalano says:
If there’s anything I hate more than companies saying, “you’re going to buy it anyway, so fuck you,” it’s self-important consumers saying, “I got mine, so fuck you.”
Fuck you back.
11/08/2011 at 00:35 malkav11 says:
Have you ever enjoyed a game that came out more than five years before you played it? Would you like to keep enjoying games like that? if so, you might want to rethink your position.
11/08/2011 at 01:04 Kamos says:
Yes nootron. Why have principles? Lets just let them make all the decisions and never complain. Lets see what happens. Just hope you don’t turn out to be in the ‘minority’ in the future. Just hope that they don’t create some arbitrary rule or requirement that puts you out of what they consider their market, all the while disguising it as something that is ‘beneficial for the consumers’.
11/08/2011 at 04:26 Wulf says:
You’re so full of yourself and it that I would like to ask whether you’re employed by Blizzard or Bethesda, or any of their subsidiaries or contracted PR firms. Do you?
You’re pulling classist shit here that makes me absolutely despise you. Not everyone happens to have the riches you do. So, what, a poor person in a less developed country wants to play the game. They have the money but they can’t due to Blizzard’s DRM. According to your viewpoint you view them as lesser, unworthy people, serfs, and/or filth.
Do you?
I can’t see how you’d have such a tiny, sheltered world view unless you’re either really spoiled, really rich, or unless you work for someone in relation to Bethesda (the leash-holders of Id) or Blizzard. My mind can’t wrap itself around how your words could exist, otherwise. They’re either borne of a naivety nurtured by a sheltered, pampered life, or by a pay cheque. Either way, it’s horrible.
It just really pisses me off how people in first world countries treat the rest of the world, it really does. I find it deplorable.
If Torchlight II decided to pull this shit with its single-player mode then I’d turn on them in an instant; Because I have integrity and decency, and I realise how unfair of a system it is. And to boil that unfairness down to a snide remark about a few people in Kansas, with an anti-American comment like that… I’m sorry, but wow, what a dick.
—
Just to expand upon this; I have friends who might otherwise have been interested in Diablo III, perhaps enough to pull me along. But Blizzard has killed that idea soundly. How?
- My foreign friends are too foreign for me, I must be separated from them for my own safety.
- If anyone has a less than perfect Internet connection, then they’re unworthy of the game as they may harm its ‘sanctity,’ what with them being disgusting serfs and all.
Really.
That turned everyone I know off the game, right away. The thing is is that I have a group of friends from across the globe, and not all of them have perfect Internet, but all of them would have had the money to buy the game. But now Blizzard has removed any desire for them to do so.
They won’t be able to play multiplayer with any of the other folks in my group of friends, and they won’t be able to play singleplayer properly.
But that’s just fine because it works okay for us, right?
Fuck that.
11/08/2011 at 14:43 Johndoh says:
I think he has a somewot valid point buried under the asshattery. I mean, this is their product right? If you were buying lawn mowers or some other type of non-game object you’d look at the feature list, see if it has the features you want, and purchase/not purchase depending.
The problem comes along (and this happens more often in media such as games, movies and music) is that more often than not is that this product is one of a kind. You can buy Torchlight 2, but it might not have the *feel* of Diablo, and it definitely won’t have the story.
His original point seemed to be that “If the product is not for you, don’t buy it” but he seemed to wake up on the dick side of the bed that morning.
I’ll be purchasing the game, and I’ll probably purchase Torchlight 2 as well, since they are both going to be really fun games that I’ll spend dozens of hours on each.
11/08/2011 at 18:08 Kamos says:
Lets put it like this: Diablo 3 requiring an internet connection to play is pretty much like GM making a car that requires pristine roads. It absolutely won’t drive on so-so roads, dirt roads and god forbid you try to drive it off-road. Obviously, they won’t build roads everywhere, because that would be crazy.
The unacceptable part is NOT that GM won’t build roads. It is not even that they made a car that is designed to die as soon as you hit a bump in the road (because, as you’ve said, it’s their product, just don’t buy it). The unacceptable part is that GM justifies this as something that is for the consumer’s own good, since the arbitrary requirement for roads will make travelling on their cars faster and more comfortable. Which is stupid. The true reason being that by forcing you to only use the best roads they can make a cheap car that wouldn’t last 10 days in a farm road. And then a representative from another company comes and says, “yeah, it would be great if we could force people to only drive on roads, and then make that acceptable”.
And even more unacceptable is that some people see this as ‘evolution’:
“The arbitrary requirement for pristine roads is the future. Because, in the future, every road will be great”. Yeah, that is exactly how infrastructure works in places without the populational density of Europe. Right on, man.
Some people think it is ok, since “my house has a very nice road right in front of it”. Some people think that, if others don’t have the best road available where they live, that they should go and ask the government to build it. Because, DIABLO.
The real problem is that people can’t recognize software that is faulty by design, that is engineered to be not quite as good as it could be – for commercial reasons. Pretty much like what happens in the consoles wars, instead of having games work anywhere (provided the hardware is good enough) you arbitrarily make it so you need a specific machine to play. Or Microsoft forcing a document standard that, while theoretically open, is filled to the brim with blackboxes so that no open source text editor will ever be able to open MS office’s files exactly right.
Only FOOLS and consoletards think this is good.
EDIT: remoevd some typos. But not the last one, because it is funny to mistype you’ve removed typos.
11/08/2011 at 20:21 wererogue says:
@johndoh
“If you were buying lawn mowers or some other type of non-game object you’d look at the feature list, see if it has the features you want, and purchase/not purchase depending.”
Yes. And then, if I cared enough about lawn mowers to be part of a lawn mower community, I would most likely discuss with them why I decided to purchase/not purchase that particular lawn mower. I might read articles or comments that they had made, detailing what they liked and didn’t like about the lawn mowers in question. Then, if a company came out with a new lawn mower with blades made of jam, I’d probably go to that same community and say “hey, those new jam blades sound like they’ll be a bit pants, don’t you think?”
10/08/2011 at 21:39 Solidstate89 says:
Not that I ever had any intention of buying Diablo III (it would break my streak of never purchasing Blizzard games) but any game that has always-on DRM is no buy for me. I won’t even pirate it.
You Developers and Publishers who use the always-on DRM for your games can fuck right off.
10/08/2011 at 21:39 nootron says:
“Also, I totally love it when an app or game I click on tells me to hang on for a moment, because it has to update before I can use it”
I cannot believe the world is sitting idly by while Jim Rossignol and a vocal minority of D2 modders get all up in arms about how they will have to be, sigh, ‘always online’ while playing D3 for 300 hours this winter. The Horror.
10/08/2011 at 22:26 gabbaell says:
I cannot believe the world isn’t listening to nootron’s advice just up the page there, to just suck it up and stop whining because it doesn’t affect him.
11/08/2011 at 00:36 malkav11 says:
I’ve never modded Diablo II and probably wouldn’t mod Diablo III. I just like to be able to actually play the games I’ve purchased on an indefinite basis.
11/08/2011 at 01:15 Kamos says:
I like choice. I like technology that is designed to be as good as it can be, without defects or limitations arbitrarily included by the developer because ‘fuck you, that’s what I want you to have’.
I don’t like lobbying, I don’t like corporations throwing their weight around to screw me and I definitely don’t like them shoving faulty, bugged, non-compatible, non-cross platform and DRMed to hell monstrosities down my throat because that’s ‘what I’ll buy’.
I won’t buy it. The problem is that you will, because apparently you like what I’ve described above.
10/08/2011 at 21:42 The Sentinel says:
[Post deleted because too rattled by arguing with Facebook morons to read articles properly. May go off for a Tam Hank instead.]
10/08/2011 at 21:44 thegooseking says:
So, with what happened to PSN a couple of months ago, and a number of successful hacks and DDoS attacks against games companies since, why the everloving unfuck does anyone think it’s remotely plausible that people are ready to trust “always-online” yet?
10/08/2011 at 21:45 ArcaneSaint says:
I propose we all take one of those fancy, expensive super-high-speed, closest-to-perfectly-reliable internet connections you can get and have them send the bills to Blizard/whoever forces you to be online permanently. See if they still think it’s such a Great Idea when they have to pay for it.
I’m not even gonna bother getting a cracked version of this one, that’s how much I despise them. I’m gonna feel filthy if I even so much as consider playing this game, knowing what kind of people were involved in the development.*
*Not saying all of the development team are utter narcissistic idiots who think they have the solution for everything, I’m sure there are some decent and even good people there, unfortunately nobody asks their opinions.
10/08/2011 at 21:45 Mjauv says:
All the fans are “always online” eh? I guess I’m not a fan then. Not a real one anyway.
I do love this logic though – imagine all the games updating magically without you having to do anything about it. It’s almost as awesome as me not locking my front door and then somebody can come in to my apartment and re-arrange my furniture to make my crib better. Sweet!
Tim Willits is a moron.
10/08/2011 at 21:48 pazmacats says:
“Imagine picking up a boss and he’s automatically updated. Or there’s some new boss that your boss didn’t know about, or your boss didn’t like anyway. My boss is all automatically there. But it does take juggernauts like my boss to make change. My boss is a big proponent of always connected. He’s always connected. Our boss ist always connected.” – And soon YOU will be connected too!
10/08/2011 at 21:50 mkultra says:
As long as there is no duping, they could skewer the family cat, roast it and then eat it while touching themselves and I wouldn’t care.
10/08/2011 at 22:32 wererogue says:
This is the most sensible comment in favour of always-on ITT.
10/08/2011 at 23:08 Nalano says:
No duping? Haha! They just added a monetary aspect to loot. Now there’s a profit motive for crafty, crafty minds to break the system!
10/08/2011 at 21:51 karry says:
“If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.”
I was thinking…if i could force him to always eat only dog turds…would it become acceptable after awhile ? If so – awesome.
11/08/2011 at 00:20 Hematite says:
@Karry
I don’t think that’s a good comparison.
Forcing him to eat dog turds sounds pretty acceptable already.
10/08/2011 at 21:51 grable says:
I have a 100% stable 20Mb pipe, wont be playing offline anytime soon.
And i still fucking hate always-on with a passion!
Its the principal of it all, im not fond of getting shit i dont want shoved down my throat.
So fuck you Blizzard, i hope you choke on some fat cocks.
10/08/2011 at 21:54 Dionysus says:
It’d be nice to have an argument, Tim, before talking to the press. Why should a game designed to check for updates and other things impede someone from playing the singleplayer game offline.
My operating system is always connected. Except when it’s not. It doesn’t stop functioning when it can’t reach the internet. I also get a choice of how it updates among many other things. This is ideal to me and I certainly think it’s “the future” in terms of OS design. Once it stops working when offline, I’m off to install some other OS.
(My OS also allows for LAN connections to be made! Wow!)
10/08/2011 at 21:55 Stardog says:
Tim Willits is a dumbass. PC games don’t sell well, and this is just another PC-specific extra that will stop people buying further.
Diablo 3 would sell with always-on, but Doom 4 and all id’s future games wouldn’t.
10/08/2011 at 21:58 Kirill says:
I’m on a 7 month deployment in the Navy. There is no internet for personal computers on a warship. Guess they want to screw over people like me from being able to play at all.
10/08/2011 at 22:35 Brise Bonbons says:
It’s OK – there are other games for you to play during that time – Blizzard explicitly says so. They would recommend you consider Torchlight 2, for example.
This stuff just sucks for gents like you, but at least you have our internet sympathy! I’m sure it will bring you great comfort.
Have a [pleasant/exciting/uneventful/whatever you wish for] deployment, by the way.
10/08/2011 at 22:37 GHudston says:
You are just about the only person I’ve seen with a reasonable argument in this whole thing. Well done.
10/08/2011 at 21:59 Ultra-Humanite says:
It’d be nice if internet connections were A) more universal and B) faster before they start this requiring us to be online all the time nonsense. On the one hand, ISPs want to charge us more and more for less and less and game devs want to use more and more bandwidth for the most inane bullsh*t.
10/08/2011 at 22:01 CelticPixel says:
I want the choice. Don’t take away that choice and pretend I’m actually getting something extra.
10/08/2011 at 22:06 Lantzalot says:
Ugh. A developer chiming in that online-only is the best for consumers, when he means best for developers. Is this really best for me? He can ‘improve’ his game without me noticing. I forget when patches were so much about ‘improving’ instead of just ‘fixing the broken shit you sold me.’ And how idealistic do you have to be to single-mindedly consider only the minor positive benefits of such a dramatic restriction of access.
So much is wrong and insulting in this. Make it easier for game companies to sell unfinished products. Say how happy you are at consumers being “forced” to do something. Sign off by equating how you live to being how everyone who is relevant lives. Eliminate choice, make it harder to track the behavior of game companies, guarantee increased data usage, and the best selling point he can come up with is involuntary game updating that the consumer is unaware of? Which we already basically have? Are you shitting me?
Hopefully these people will learn the consequences of their condescension.
And this logic of “everyone’s still going to buy it, LOL” is so annoying. This isn’t Starcraft in South Korea. Talking such a big game is going to end up being really embarrassing, I think and hope.
10/08/2011 at 22:09 mandrill says:
Sigh. Progress marches ever onwards. We’re developing into an always connected society. This is the transition phase between an offline society and an always online society. There will come a time when we will be continually connected at all times and in ways no-one can predict, Those of you crying out against ‘always online’ games are like an old man living in a cave and refusing to have anything to do with these newfangled things called ‘houses’ that they’ve just invented.
The future is online, get used to it.
10/08/2011 at 22:20 Khann says:
I don’t like the future.
You have fun having no control over anything.
10/08/2011 at 22:30 Azradesh says:
Then screw the future. Is it so wrong to want the *option* for offline? I have nothing against all these online features, I just want the option damn it!
10/08/2011 at 22:44 gabbaell says:
Now I see. Not being able to play a game, when I’m somewhere without internet access, is progress.
10/08/2011 at 22:51 Lantzalot says:
Haha, what? That simile doesn’t really follow, but even so it’s still somewhat useful for my purpose as well. Not everyone lives in a house. And only agoraphobics stay in them all the time. Also, there isn’t enough room in the world for every person to have a house, and mortgage payments are expensive. To consider the only modern people to be those who live in a house is idiotic.
In addition, progress marches ever onwards? Extremely debatable. And being an always online society has many difficulties to solve before becoming a true possibility, least among them being the ever-increasingly overloaded infrastructures, which require massive amounts of capital that is usually subsidized by governments. And maybe a few truly effective and effecting examples of the consequences of having imperfect security in a ‘somewhat online’ society will temper desire to have ‘everything’ be online.
Assuming at this point that the increasing proliferation of internet connectivity is a sign that in the future, everything will be connected all the time for everything would be like assuming in the 1950s that people would one day fly in a plane for every conceivable transportation task presented to them, be it moving from one room to the other, going down the street, or across the country, just because we used planes a lot more than we did before that point. So clearly, we would continue to use them for more uses at an ever-expanding rate, yes? There’s never an intersection between technology, cost, and practicality. Ever seen old concept art for flying cars?
More importantly, saying that the only reason to dislike online-only single player games is fear of technology is laughable. Such a good laugh, I’m honestly suspecting your entire post was a brilliantly composed piece of irony. If that is the case, well done, sir.
10/08/2011 at 22:55 Kamos says:
Your example is wrong. This is not them trying to convince you to move from a cave to a house out of the goodness of their hearts. This is them trying to make you move to the house so they can make you pay for it, pay for taxes and sell you stuff. And then, building a shopping mall where your cave was.
They want you always online because they want to shove functionalities you don’t want or need down your throat. They want you always online because they want the ability to patch games that should have worked out of the box. They want you online because fuck you having a choice and not being connected.
10/08/2011 at 23:14 mandrill says:
My point was that complaining about it isn’t going to stop it happening. Its going to happen and you might as well just learn to live with that fact.
How many of you own a smartphone? Have you turned the 3g off? Do you use it for reading RPS on the bus? You are already always online, but it is presented in a way which is transparent to you and provides you with services that you didn’t know you wanted 5 years ago.
Yes it seems a bit daft requiring you to be online to play a single player game, but there will come a point where we simply won’t question it, and all those moaning about it now will be like the people getting in a flap about violence in videogames; a dying breed.
10/08/2011 at 23:19 Nalano says:
I have a phone. I text with it. That’s about it. I don’t want to fiddle with a tiny, tiny screen just so I can read the inane things people post on Facebook.
Your general premise is, in my opinion, flawed on two counts.
One: Newer isn’t necessarily better.
Two: Hackers have kept up with every kind of DRM, and this DRM is no different. DRM isn’t the answer.
11/08/2011 at 00:00 Lantzalot says:
That’s the same sort of assumption that’s so crazy in the interview. Why do you think everyone has a 3g smartphone? Just cause the tech exists doesn’t mean it’s so useful for everyone to the point the cost isn’t prohibitive. People weigh the costs and benefits, and the end result is different for different people. Having choices serves more people. This is why you’ll find that all the cell phone companies sell a large variety of models with different capabilities, not just 3g touch screen smart phones with 100 gigs of memory. You’ll find that the people selling luxury items more often learn to live with the demands of their customers than the other way around.
The complaints are the smoke, not the fire. You’re assuming again, in that this sort of thing is inevitable. I doubt it, as there will always be creators of games that are more interested in selling games than having permanent access to all copies of the games they make.
11/08/2011 at 01:00 Khann says:
That’s the way it is, so get used to it?
Oh, like how blacks being treated like dirt was the accepted norm? Or women the same? Or how tyrannical governments destroying their countries is cool, ’cause that’s just the way it is?
Yeah, I’m being a bit (OK, a lot) hyperbolic here, but my point is that you CAN ALWAYS do something about it. Having a defeatist “ah well” attitude is not the way to do so.
11/08/2011 at 01:49 Kamos says:
I’m sorry, but your example is wrong again. Using a browser on your SmartPhone to browse RPS is not ‘transparent’, it is OBVIOUS. I need to be online to use a resource that is online.
Transparent would be launching the calculator and hiaving it make the calculation elsewhere, only retrieving the result, without me ever knowing. You can be sure that that is the kind of SmartPhone I would not buy. Why? Because it is certainly designed by a moron, not an engineer!
10/08/2011 at 22:10 JohnnyMaverik says:
How out of touch are these people with the realities of where global broadband speeds and reliability, not to mention simple gaming habits on the pc? If they think this is not only acceptable but the way pc gaming should and needs to go, extremely is my guess.
10/08/2011 at 22:17 Grey_Ghost says:
Hmm, I honestly thought people would be more upset of the Real Money Actions House in D3.
10/08/2011 at 22:26 Azradesh says:
I can’t say I have any issue with something I don’t even have to look at.
10/08/2011 at 22:47 ankh says:
Now when you’re hackn’ and slashn’ with friends and you find some awesome item that’s for your friends (or random stranger’s) class you aren’t going to share when you can get 10$ or whatever and that sucks. Also it gives Blizzard incentive to make the entire game one huge marketing scheme to get people to use the RMAH, i don’t see why they wouldnt.
10/08/2011 at 23:12 Azradesh says:
I don’t know about you, but I’m not a twat and nor or the people I’ll be playing with.
11/08/2011 at 13:08 Zarunil says:
Always online and cash shop are connected. Were it not for the cash shop, I doubt they would enforce online connectivity.
11/08/2011 at 13:42 Azradesh says:
I think it’s likely that that is the biggest factor in D3 being always online.
10/08/2011 at 22:27 Mavvvy says:
I dont have anything witty to say about this one…plenty of low brow stuff I could pull out of my jocks though.
11/08/2011 at 04:49 Enikuo says:
low brow stuff, in your jocks…. I’m listening
10/08/2011 at 22:33 Navagon says:
How about Tim Willits first develop a worldwide wireless internet that’s well and truly stable as fuck? No? Then talk like that remains in the realms of fantasy then, regardless of Ubisoft’s insane hatred of money.
10/08/2011 at 22:33 GHudston says:
Honestly, I’m kind of tired of the “What if I want to play it when I’m on the bus/train/plane?!” argument.
Doesn’t anyone just read a book anymore?
11/08/2011 at 03:57 malkav11 says:
No. I read my Kindle.
11/08/2011 at 04:02 Stormbane says:
I believe we should all walk or ride a bike instead of taking the bus because it is better for our health and the environment.
Why don’t you conform to my lifestyle choice? If I were a major public transport commission and decided to enforce a ‘no bus’ rule on society would you be happy to give up your choice to ride the bus?
10/08/2011 at 22:34 magnus says:
Well just bombard the forums with complaints then, whoever at the time is responsible for whats currently pissing people can’t then turn round and say everybody’s happy, can they. If enough people do that and it gets in the apropriate media then they can’t afford to ignore it. There may not be an imediate effect but such forum bombing has never failed in the long run.
10/08/2011 at 22:37 Azradesh says:
They doesn’t seem to be enough people that care, unlike the real names thing.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27822632451&sid=3000
10/08/2011 at 22:36 wererogue says:
I wonder how Tim feels when he reads “Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect.” Maybe he breaks out the champagne?
10/08/2011 at 22:36 Advanced Assault Hippo says:
Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn are looking pretaaaay pretaaaay good!
10/08/2011 at 22:38 Kamos says:
Am I the only one who always goes offline on steam before playing? I must be, since I don’t want everyone else to see what I’m playing, when I’m playing, etc., and there is no option for that.
What this guy is saying is basically that I should be online to play or fuck off. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it.
10/08/2011 at 23:10 Azradesh says:
Sure there is, set yourself to “offline”, you’re not actually offline, but it looks like you are. Unless that’s what you’re talking about.
11/08/2011 at 01:28 frymaster says:
you can set your friends mode to offline without taking all of steam offline
11/08/2011 at 01:53 Kamos says:
Even if I set my status to offline, it still tracks how many hours I’ve played of what game. The only way to prevent it from doing that is to start Steam on offline mode.
But it IS a privacy setting that is missing. What if I don’t want to use Steam’s community features other than the chat / voice / etc. for multiplayer games? I don’t want Steam collecting my data and pulling social engineering crap on me in the future.
(The real reason is I don’t want people to know I’ve spent one gazillion hours playing – I don’t write for RPS, I can’t justify my gaming addiction saying I’m working. But the privacy flag sounds better. :-) )
11/08/2011 at 13:45 Azradesh says:
Why do you need to jusify what you do in your free time?
11/08/2011 at 18:20 Kamos says:
Gah. Stop reading my mind.
10/08/2011 at 22:47 Kevin says:
I can totally see this always-on DRM becoming the norm in the future, but to me it will only be acceptable when internet connections are as reliable as plumbing, TV cable, and phone landlines are now.
In case Ubisoft and Blizzard haven’t realized, network tech is still an infant industry. Someone ought to point out a quote from Admiral Hyman Rickover in regards to their approach to technology:
“An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated…
Unfortunately for those who must make far-reaching decision without the benefit of an intimate knowledge of reactor technology, and unfortunately for the interested public, it is much easier to get the academic side of an issue than the practical side. For a large part those involved with the academic reactors have more inclination and time to present their ideas in reports and orally to those who will listen. Since they are innocently unaware of the real but hidden difficulties of their plans, they speak with great facility and confidence. Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more.”
10/08/2011 at 22:53 mmalove says:
I just connected my upstairs desktop to the internet, its been offline for two weeks. As in, powered up, all systems go, but not connected to the internet. In spite of this, it might as well have just been shutdown and completely unpowered.
After playing through starcraft II, there is absolutely nothing I feel was necessary to force it to be always online. Sure, they implemented achievements, and I’m sure it made them feel hella good that my battlenet buddies could always chat me up, and of course the warm fuzzy feeling of DRM. But really, to enjoy the single player campaign, this was completely unnecessary.
Meanwhile, what’s lost? Well, my collection of single player games while off the internet is growing ever smaller. And to be honest, that worries me. We don’t live in a world yet where the internet is a given: road work happens, lightning strikes happen, and our ISP overlords are far from perfect. As mentioned above and currently affecting me, travel happens. I’m very thankful steam at least has an offline mode. Were it not for this, I’d be down about to dwarf fortress and minecraft. Great games, mind you, but one’s free and the other cost me 20 bucks, whereas I’ve spend hundreds in the last year alone on my gaming library.
I’m still very much on the fence with this one, but leaning towards no sale. Diablo III promises to be a great game, I’m sure entertainment wise it will provide every dollar’s worth of the 50-60 dollar price tag. But I dislike supporting a model that punishes gamers like myself that find ourselves, from time to time, offline. And the more industry folks speak of offline gaming as some sort of non-existent rubbish, the more inclined I am to intentionally refuse to buy a great game to simply take a stand.
10/08/2011 at 22:55 Enikuo says:
They can’t sell you premium services while you’re offline.
10/08/2011 at 22:58 Brometheus says:
I don’t really care that they want to do online focused gameplay, and truth be told, if I bought D3 and it had both a single-player and a Battlenet single player, I’d probably always play the online mode anyway, but it just busts my balls that they force you to choose it, rather than giving the choice.
10/08/2011 at 23:01 Kaira- says:
I wonder why movie, music and books industry don’t also embrace the always on-drm. I mean, surely you are connected all the time, and they even cost less for you as a customer, so there should be no problems ever for you. And reading books with online-connection actually enhances your reading experience, you can buy extra chapters as you go and can see what your friends are reading. The same with movies and songs, surely you want that one extra chorus?
Yes, this is sarcasm. And yes, I am mad at this “always on”-DRM.
10/08/2011 at 23:05 ragingjambo says:
I don’t really mind this and will be enjoying Diablo 3 regardless.
(until I move house in January and will be without the internet for up to 30 days >.<)
10/08/2011 at 23:19 oatmeal says:
More and more I can see myself qutting gaming completely one day. I refuse to buy anything with this kind of crap in it, and the exceptions aren’t worth buying a whole new gaming computer for. There’s hardly any sadness in it; what’s left of PC gaming is hardly worth loving.
11/08/2011 at 01:24 Wulf says:
There’s plenty of indie left out there to love that has none of this shit going on!
11/08/2011 at 07:47 MartinNr5 says:
It doesn’t even have to be indie, there are also some big name game companies that know how to treat their customers properly.
11/08/2011 at 12:21 pazmacats says:
I feel the same. Making a game involves 1 game designer, 1 programmer, two 3-D artists, 5 marketing guys, 10 accountants+legal specialists and several dozens of PR people.
It’s the industrial revolution all over again. 3 guys working, 30 guys making the profit, and customers getting mass produced shit.
10/08/2011 at 23:26 ArcaneSaint says:
You know what would really stir things up? A ddos-attack of some kind that shuts down the main servers an hour after the game is released, the shear outrage would be hilarious.
11/08/2011 at 01:54 killerkerara says:
I support daily DDOS attacks on any game that does this. Make sure it’s during peak hours.
10/08/2011 at 23:33 Kleppy says:
So how long is it going to take for a group to crack this nonsense? I’m betting 43 minutes.
10/08/2011 at 23:43 ArcaneSaint says:
Put my money on leaked pre-release version, finished build.
11/08/2011 at 00:03 Azradesh says:
A bit longer as your character and world are stored server side.
10/08/2011 at 23:39 MeruFM says:
I love the smell of internet rage in the morning.
10/08/2011 at 23:39 kud13 says:
the only place in the world (as far as I know) where Internet access is considered a recognized human right is Finland.
when will game developers realize, the whole world isn’t Finland?
10/08/2011 at 23:46 ArcaneSaint says:
Also in Estonia, France, Spain and Greece. Though I suppose the last one will have it’s connection cut quite soon.
Source: Wikipedia
10/08/2011 at 23:43 pakoito says:
This guy needs a reality check on living outside the States. Also, my desktop never touches internet, only my netbook.
10/08/2011 at 23:47 ArcaneSaint says:
He obviously rolled a natural 1 on his reality check.
11/08/2011 at 00:18 Deltadisco says:
He doesn’t just need a check on living outside the States – he needs a reality check on living outside of urban/suburban areas IN the States.
10/08/2011 at 23:49 polychrome says:
let’s make a facebook group and impress blizzard with the amount of sameminded likes!
10/08/2011 at 23:58 D3xter says:
Well then id can go fuck itself like Activision Blizzard. They didn’t even make any games since 2004 with Doom 3… which wasn’t all that great. RAGE is also an Offline title, but generally they don’t make any games I can’t live without.
“Change” as he calls it can be good as long as the customer gets something out of that too, say Free2Play games, MMOs or generally Digital Distribution etc.
Forcing your customers to “always be online” for a SP experience isn’t change and isn’t benefitting them in any way. It is only benefitting the company by giving them total control over their IP and their game. They are basically able to pull the plug on it at any given point and can declare and enforce any number of ridiculous regulations/stipulations or ban anyone for any reason, even from SinglePlayer and making that game he spent money on useless.
11/08/2011 at 02:17 magnus says:
All this hate because of one statement? Isn’t that bit overreactive in a sour-grapes kind of way, would you still have bought Rage if he admitted to voting for Bush/having a fondness for Coldplay/ preferring the later Star-Wars films instead?
11/08/2011 at 07:48 MrMud says:
But you do get something out of this. Not if you only ever wanted to play singleplayer or is a cheating scumbag, but in any other scenario you gain something important from this.
And that is prevention of online cheating.
If you ever played Diablo 1 or 2 online you will know that cheating, duping and hacking was rampant. So bad in fact that it is not possible to play a hardcore character online in a public game without getting killed in town by a hack.
Having D3 be always online allows them to have a client-server infrastructure within the game logic itself that makes hacking much, much harder. Compare this to World of Warcraft that considering its profile has been fairly spared from hacks and cheats.
11/08/2011 at 09:29 D3xter says:
@magnus: I thought it was clear that my comment was conditional to them implementing such a feature, one person alone isn’t a company spokesperson, but if they plan to implement this “feature” in any of their coming games they can as well go and jump off a cliff for all I care.
Also, I like the later Star Wars films.
@MrMud: Closed B.Net was always the same kind of deal, all “playing” you did was on their servers and characters were saved there. It did near to nothing to prevent cheating, hacking and duping, people did it despite of it being the “Closed B.Net”.
Having an Offline Mode to your game or not doesn’t change anything about that fact, and noone (should) care if you cheat in SinglePlayer or not.
11/08/2011 at 09:45 MrMud says:
It is totally different.
D2 was a client game that stored some stuff on the server and talked to other clients though the server.
D3 is a client-server game where significant parts of the code exist soley on the server and as such are not avaliable for the client to exploit.
This is also why there can be no offline mode because that would mean that they would have to expose this code to the players and become significantly more vulnerable to hacks.
As such you should compare it to WoW instead of D2 in terms of vulnerability to hacks.
11/08/2011 at 10:59 Mattressi says:
MrMud, when you say ‘public’, are you talking about the open servers? Because, you’re certainly correct about them – open servers were horrid with almost only hacks. However, open servers seemed to me to be there so you could play LAN games with your friends and then if you wanted to play multiplayer with them still when they went home, you could start a locked server on the open server list.
However, the closed servers had no such issues for me. Sure there was a lot of glitching (and botting, which even WoW is not immune to), but being always online wouldn’t fix that. Basically, closed servers in Diablo 2 were free of character hacks, so there is no reason to fix what wasn’t broken. Either play on the closed realm or STFU.
As for boycotting Rage because of what Tim said – I intend to as well. I don’t care about his political views or anything else which doesn’t affect me. However, if he’s going to support this crap that Blizzard are pulling, it seems like that he will, at some point, try to do the same with his own games. I see boycotting Rage as a preventative measure – even if it hasn’t got an always-online requirement, I don’t want this moron to be given the money and success to rise to the top and shape future gaming to his view.
As a side note/question: why are some people so taken aback – completely astounded, even – that other people might not buy a game for a reason other than not liking it’s gameplay/graphics? I mean, seriously, is everyone that says this too young to have ever boycott a product? Are they all just such well-trained consumers that they feel they must obey their corporate masters? Are they some kind of gaming addicts which not only feel the need to purchase every single ARPG (or Blizzard game), but also feel that they should deride/abuse those who choose not to? Do they not realise that some aren’t necessarily boycotting it, but simply have no desire to ‘own’ a game which they can only play occasionally?
Seriously, I’m going to buy Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of them. What would I possibly need another ( except, locked down) ARPG for? Even if I wanted another and didn’t mind only being able to play it when connected to the internet, I’d go for the (much more atmospheric looking) free ARPG called Path of Exile. WE HAVE CHOICES PEOPLE! We don’t just have to buy a bloody Blizzard game – there are much better games made by much more considerate and deserving devs out there.
11/08/2011 at 12:47 D3xter says:
Items/Characters were stored on their servers and most duping methods were related to server/client asynchronicity, you couldn’t modify things client-side and upload it to the Blizzard servers. The only Hacks/Mods made possible clientside were things like Maphacks.
I don’t know the amount of code/triggers that will happen either server or clientside and I can’t imagine that you do either if you aren’t working for Blizzard or aren’t at least in the Beta so there’s no point discussing that at lengths for now.
What I do know though is that even WoW and other MMOs had problems with things like SpeedHacks, Bots and even Duping outside of Soulbound items (which Diablo III won’t have). Things “happening” Online aren’t a sure-fire protection against Hacks/Cheats, only the likes of Onlive where you only get a Stream of a game and none of the code will be.
11/08/2011 at 00:04 googoogjoob says:
hahaha oh my god his wikipedia article
“The PC gaming community has been praising ID Software for their continuing support, recently after a long pause once again proved it’s credibility when Tim Willit’s confirmed modding tools will be available and supported in upcoming multi-platform game Rage, quoted from a gaming news article.”
TIM WILLITS: HERO TO THE PC GAMING COMMUNITY
11/08/2011 at 00:44 ArcaneSaint says:
I think he wrote that page himself, perhaps we ought to change it to a more neutral point of view.
11/08/2011 at 01:33 Burning Man says:
Done.
11/08/2011 at 02:19 magnus says:
Well it’s not like he questioned the parentage of PC gamers, did he, or have I missed something?
11/08/2011 at 02:46 Burning Man says:
Its more that that sort of biased hyperbole has no place in a Wikipedia article. Additionally, random trivia about modding tools has no place on Willits’ personal page. Also, to no-one’s great surprise, the edits that included this biased crap both here and in the RAGE article, were made by the same person.
11/08/2011 at 00:14 Lemming says:
On the bright side, it’s things like this that are pushing the games industry to a precipice.
And beyond that? Failing big studios wondering why they aren’t making their money back on their bloatware DRM-filled million-dollar budget games while indie games reach a golden age.
Give it time, it’ll all collapse in on itself and revitalise from the ground up.
11/08/2011 at 01:07 Nalano says:
It’s certainly happened before.
11/08/2011 at 05:31 Khann says:
Can’t wait for the world itself to do the same.
Seems we are heading that way.
11/08/2011 at 00:36 Zelnick says:
It appears age is finally catching up with you Mr. Willits.
I am usually online but I do unplug my machine from the router when I’m not going to use the internet for a while(or when I don’t want something to phone home or automatically update), so I am not always online. Games with a single-player mode should always be playable with no internet connection. When someone purchases a game they should be able to play it on their own terms.
11/08/2011 at 00:44 FleabagF7 says:
His logic seems to be “Diablo 3 is a big title and it’s going to force this upon everybody, so now the rest of us can do it too and nobody will complain”. Excuse me?
11/08/2011 at 00:46 Tams80 says:
I’m not really comfortable with a company trying to change gaming. I’m quite happy with options. If he just said “We’ve decided to make the game like this and if you want to play you have to accept it like it is” then I wouldn’t be happy, as I would like to play Diablo III offline, but I’d accept that is what they have decided (and take my money elsewhere). To suggest your forcefully trying to spread this further, almost suggesting you want most gaming to be “always connected” is morally questionable (to me). I kind of hope potential customers tell him where to shove it.
It seems like he’s still selling Diablo III as a traditional game (as in there is substantial, whole parts of the game that can be played offline), when it seems to completely be an MMO. If it was sold as an MMO, I’d have far less of an issue (yet still be annoyed that it wasn’t a traditional game).
11/08/2011 at 00:47 Sian says:
The idiots just keep piling on, don’t they? Argh! Especially the part about forcing customers towards something. That really shows me how much respect these people have for us.
11/08/2011 at 01:03 Mr Roker says:
Now there’s a scary image. Go to sleep, wake up in the morning with Diablo having used up the last of my bandwidth becuase of some ‘cool thing’. Slowing my internet to a crawl in the process. Hmm…
These people DO understand that the Antipodies get raped for bandwidth, right?
11/08/2011 at 14:35 Khann says:
I’m actually curious about this. How well will it work when your internet is capped/throttled?
For those who don’t know, in countries like Australia/New Zealand (I admit to being somewhat ignorant as to what other countries are the same), when you go over a certain bandwidth allowance for the month (let’s say 50GB.. which is generous) your internet speed is reduced. Severely. Generally it’s down to 64k.
Yes, 64k. That’s pretty much dial-up. Are people going to be getting constant time outs trying to play their single player game? What happens when that poor little pipe can’t keep up and packets start dropping all over the place?
11/08/2011 at 01:05 WildeAnarchist says:
My “premium” internet connection in London SE1 is a POS. Ergo, always-on DRM riddled software is…
11/08/2011 at 01:07 gganate says:
Yeah, I loved it when I had to download a huge patch immediately after installing Assassin’s Creed 2. Oh, it’s great when your internet connection goes out and you can’t play a single-player game. imagine! How cool would it be to not really own a paid for piece of software?
11/08/2011 at 01:26 InternetBatman says:
I’m not entirely sure that Diablo III will have the lasting power of other Blizzard games. It will have a huge initial surge. Reviewers will probably praise it regardless of its merits. But what happens when you can just buy your perfect build? I don’t know if people will really want to stay given the now systematic inequality on the auction house.
Also, always on Internet? Are we playing on consoles?
11/08/2011 at 02:01 akidderz says:
Doesn’t anyone taste the irony of people complaining about “always on” on a forum? You are online right now for christsake. It always kills me that the vocal anti-DRM and anti-always on people are constantly complaining in forums and other online places. Shouldn’t you be shouting from your cardboard box on the street about the evils on always on? Wait…your online. You can do it! You’ll be able to play!
Also — I think Blizzard can reasonably assume that the 11 million plus subscribers to their MMO (nevermind that millions of others playing other online games) who manage to be “online” when they play, will also manage to be online for Diablo 3.
Always on is good for developers and game makers. So you can’t play on the train. Do something else. Leave your game playing of games that cost millions to make while you are sitting in front of your PC.
This whiny BS is ridiculous. Don’t buy the game. It will succeed and thrive without you. They don’t want you and neither do I. Go hack/cheat/crack/play off-line some other POS game. Developers who don’t do this often don’t because they CAN’T. Read the Grim interview from the other day — those guys wanted to lock down the Titan Quest servers for their community and their players — but it takes resources they didn’t have.
I’ve been gaming long enough to remember when tons of little studios couldn’t make money because piracy was so rampant. Always on, XBOX live, etc. — these are mechanism the industry has created out of self-preservation. I hope that every PC game become always on and that you luddittes revolt by never going online again where we have to hear your whiny asses.
11/08/2011 at 02:57 Kamos says:
You obviously don’t understand the difference between loading a webpage and having always-on connection. I’ll just leave it at that.
11/08/2011 at 03:05 Burning Man says:
It is an issue of control, of security. Maybe it doesn’t upset you that you’re being forced, against your will, to surrender all playability of a game that can be played offline, AFTER you’ve paid full price for it, but it evidently does upset a lot of other people. The notion that Blizzard could happily pull the plug on my single player game and I wouldn’t be able to do squat about it frightens me. The notion that a fellow developer supports this obvious arm-twisting, in an attempt to force everyone to treat always-online as customary for all games frightens me even more. Sony saying “3D! 3D!! THREE DEE!!!” or MS going “Kinect! KINECT!!” are much milder examples of the same thing.
I understand the piracy concern but am surprised you don’t understand the security worries. I would rather never play any games than indulge this all-your-base-belongs-to-everyone fantasy that publishers have.
11/08/2011 at 03:06 cmc5788 says:
Well, HTTP requests/responses have a fair amount of overhead. Barring a massive game update on login, the bandwidth required to maintain some minimum level of validation in a single-player Battle.net game should be pretty much on par with surfing the web. It’s not terribly burdensome.
11/08/2011 at 04:03 Dionysus says:
So, that we’re online now means we must suffer singleplayer games to require it and for people to have no option? Is this the specious reasoning you’re sticking with?
The Grim Dawn creators would have liked to have made their ONLINE play more secure. The interview did not mention he wanted to be an asshole and require it for everything.
There are a host of reasons this is a terrible idea and that a choice is simple to implement and better for everyone, save Blizzard wanting control. You do not appear to want to listen, or are too stupid to know a good reason when you read one.
I’ll throw one more out at everyone; there are lots of reasons this is stupid. I have three friends who have gone through financial difficulties since 2008. They have periodically (though at different times) cancelled their internet connections. They’d have preferred not to, but, food, gas, electricity, kids, these tended to take up all the budgets. They still have games they could play, though, as you imagine, they didn’t buy new ones. Should this happen to any of you Blizzard champions sometime down the line, I’m sure you’d be cheesed. Especially should “always online” become STANDARD for PC gaming.
Anyone who thinks “always online” in singleplayer games is some sort of technological advance–hence those against it are “Luddites”–is sadly mistaken. It may be a bit of Stockholm syndrome, but I will withhold judgement until case-by-case evidence emerges.
Lots of my software is enhanced with internet access. I do not install any software that requires the internet to run unless internet connectivity is the point. A singleplayer game should not require a connection; any online enhancements should be optional.
Fear not. You won’t find me on Battle.net, so you can ignore me if you’d like. Unless Blizzard changes their policies, including LAN play. I’ll not suffer a Luddite company that doesn’t use my network to its fullest technological potential.
11/08/2011 at 10:06 Kamos says:
@ cmc5788
Yes, bandwidth usage is not significant. However, you’re forgetting the part where loading a webpage is resistant to connection “hiccups”, while an always-on DRM is constantly sending packages and, if packages are lost, it closes your game. The browser does not close as soon as I lose my connection.
11/08/2011 at 14:14 wererogue says:
“Got mine.”
12/08/2011 at 08:20 Malixu says:
Yes, I’m online right this second. However, for the 12 days up to Wednesday, I had no home Internet connection.
I can live with software that requires activation once, because I have an Internet connection more of the time than not, and it would be exceptional for me to therefore not be able to play a game I paid for as a result.
On the other hand, I do not have a constant Internet connection all the time, and if my Internet connection goes down having my main source of alternative entertainment go away with it seems to be defeating the point rather.
11/08/2011 at 02:10 pipman3000 says:
My DSL is shitty and tends to go down randomly but at least I’ll be able to play Diablo 3 while I- oh wait, fuck, never mind :(
11/08/2011 at 02:20 johnpeat says:
Y’know I’m all for pushing ahead and making games better – even if it’s at the expense of losing a few stragglers and luddites along the way – BUT it has to be for a good, solid reason and this doesn’t have one.
Forcing people to be online to play single-player games makes NO sense (other than DRM/anti-piracy) – and it has a list of downsides I don’t need to repeat. It’s not ‘pushing technology’ or ‘forcing users to change the way they view games’ – it’s a dead end of misery, increased Tech Support problems and lowered sales (arguably, their shareholders should be kicking the door down because it’s they who’ll lose out).
Why does anyone care what someone from iD says anyway? It’s decades since they did anything interesting – from what I’ve seen the only new tech they’ve created for Rage is a weapons-grade cliche generator which has coated their next game in 8 inches of PURE corn (the last trailer they released was cringingly shit)
11/08/2011 at 02:35 cmc5788 says:
Being able to play offline and/or opt out of updates are luxuries we’ve traded for the myriad benefits of synchronous content. I understand the frustration — it’s a bit like pulling a band-aid — but we’ll be better off this way in the long run.
11/08/2011 at 16:22 InternetBatman says:
I doubt the benefits outweigh the obvious disadvantages such as lag spikes, server outages, internet outages, worse local coop, games disappearing when the company goes under, forced obsolescence extending to entertainment products and old game servers being shut down.
The benefits to the consumer all come with serious caveats. Reduced cheating, which doesn’t even matter in this game since you can just buy uberweapons anyways. Lack of separate single/multiplayer characters, which isn’t much of a benefit considering that you could transfer items or play with your friends using single player characters in Diablo II on unprotected servers no problem. Server datasaves, which means they’ll persist after your computer goes down, but you can’t back them up anywhere. Ease of connection for multiplay, but it results in worse play for people in the same house since they have to share bandwidth. Automatic patching, which is just fine for a company as large as Blizzard, but several companies release patches that make a game more broken. Possibly decreased system load, which isn’t really a benefit considering that bandwidth is a much greater bottleneck and processing power is reaching diminishing returns.
It’s not like a bandaid being ripped off. It’s a shit decision made by accountants instead of engineers and designers. It forces a bunch of data to go through the weakest bottleneck for DRM reasons.
11/08/2011 at 02:54 pupsikaso says:
WOW! What a little ——–
Why don’t you image this instead, huh? Imagine that you don’t live in an area with perfect internet connection, or that you can’t afford to have one? Imagine that you turn on your PC and WHAT DO YOU KNOW? Your internet is crapped out again! Imagine that you’re playing an online game and your internet decides to have a little burp and you start losing packets and then what? “Oh I’m sorry, but you have to be ALWAYS connected to play this game, here, let me just dump you out of the game and delete all your progress until the last checkpoint.”
WAKE THE F— UP! You live in a freaking dream world if you think that the majority of people are able to experience perfect, always-on connection. THAT IS NOT THE CASE. THE REAL WORLD is DIFFERENT.
11/08/2011 at 03:12 Sardaukar says:
In light of this news and other recent announcements, I guess I’ll just have to… buy the game.
Sorry, I’m in the crowd that never played Diablo 1 or 2 modded and only rarely offline. At the same time, I was absolutely sick of the rash of dupes and bots and maphacks and other such devilry that plagued even the closed b.net.
If doing this gives them a cost-effective and more enforceable way to remove those problems from my online experience, go for it. If I’m ever without internet, it will be if anything a reprieve from Diablo 3 to play through a bit of the growing pile of games I’ve amassed on these Steam sales.
Really, I could understand the torch-waving and defiant spirit if this were any other game… but the vast, vast majority of Diablo 2 players won’t be affected by it in the slightest. If you did enjoy playing modded offline, you have my sympathy, but you’re an extremely tiny crowd to make concessions to.
11/08/2011 at 03:15 jay35 says:
Tim Willits hasn’t been relevant since the 90s so who gives a toss what he thinks.
11/08/2011 at 03:20 Drinking with Skeletons says:
You know, of the many political ideologies that you can subscribe to, corporate fascism is a pretty uncommon one. Seriously, if videogames were just magic programs spawned from the ether, and “online” was some sort of mystical ocean of positive energy in which all of reality were suspended, his gung-ho demeanor might be heart-warming. Of course, since we live in the real world, we would all have to be connected, leech-like, to corporations that want out money. Well, I guess it would be like a leech connected to a lamprey that, itself, was coiled back upon the leech, so…hmmm…I, uh, maybe need to take a break from analogies for a bit.
Fun game! Take his original quote and replace the section in bold! “If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.
I’ll start! “If we could force people to live in camps of some kind, perhaps for reeducation purposes, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.”
11/08/2011 at 16:49 Khann says:
“If we could force people to never question anything, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.”
11/08/2011 at 03:23 Kamos says:
EDIT: Reply fail. Sorry.
11/08/2011 at 03:32 FakeAssName says:
what an ass, maybe he is intimidated by hard reset?
11/08/2011 at 03:44 HeavyStorm says:
I keep the same opinion I had before: I’ll be very glad to hack away this fucking game and make sure Blizz never see me online. And if Tim share’s Blizz opinion, fuck him too.
He actually says “FORCE” people. Come on! If you’re forcing, then, it means we DON’T WANT IT.
Now, one last thing: I’d change opinion on two conditions:
1) Blizzard (and every publisher out there) can provide me with a PERMANENT internet connection,
2) And in the event that isn’t available, Blizz will pay me a fine.
If those two conditions are met, I shall withdraw my opinions and let them require me to be online. MFkers.
11/08/2011 at 04:01 JackShandy says:
Steam stopped working for me a while ago and now I can’t play anything. Before it clapped out it was corrupting files I’d downloaded all the time, making me copy/paste the files to a more secure location or redownload them all the bloody time. I understand that this is probably some strange quirk of my computer or internet or whatever instead of Steam’s fault, but all I know is: The Deus Ex 3 leak was the most fantastically stable game I’ve played in a long time.
I’m sick of depending on a long chain of nebulous other parties to play games I own.
11/08/2011 at 12:37 pazmacats says:
There’s the flaw. You don’t own games. You “own” the right to play them. Games are not cars. Games are just a couple of lines of code and the seller says: Give me 50 bucks and I let you run this code on your computer. (If it doesn’t work, well …) “Always online” enables the seller to enforce his rights. So the buyers slowly start to realize that they don’t own anything and are generally considered a criminal bunch of annoying nitwits who have to be herded to micro-transaction pastures.
11/08/2011 at 04:07 lijenstina says:
“In this uncertain times, in this grim economy, could You imagine living for years without worries about having enough money for food or rent ? Imagine that you have three meals a day, a roof over your head and an isolation from the all the stress and noise of everyday life ? Look no further. There is a place where all those dreams of existential security are becoming true.
Get incarcerated, now! ”
Ah, marketing speak – selling t*rds as gourmet meals. The pinnacle of human achievement for the last few centuries. The pillar of sanity and critical thinking, the beacon that shines through eons pointing out the mesmerizing future of peace and prosperity.
Maybe Tim is shooting for a job in politics – to sell a war somewhere, or an imbecilic ideology cloak for thievery while the casino is still running. This is just a test for that :p
11/08/2011 at 04:29 Frye2k11 says:
Some companies are heading towards any content provider’s wet dream :
- have people buy your game (not entirely unreasonable)
- force those people to have either a credit card or some other online payment method
- force them to have an internet connection that always works
- do not implement any client managed networking features like dedicated servers unless you feel you can justify charging a monthly fee or monopolize the servers.
- do add networking software that you control, like an online store app, which everybody is forced to install AND make an account for.
-enhance the game for people willing to spend even more money.
I’m not a hippie or anything and yay capitalism but this isn’t right. Not all companies are like that but a gamer can’t just go to the competition like I did with my phone company. I don’t buy all that many games anymore, so there’s plenty of choice left, but I hope that this trend will end or it might interfere with my daily gaming fix. Good luck Blizzard, you were great for a decade, thanks.
11/08/2011 at 16:26 InternetBatman says:
Don’t forget that they are now able to force obsolescence in entertainment products now. That’s gotta be worth a goldmine in its own right.
11/08/2011 at 04:52 Knucker says:
Imagine this for just a moment. What if the fact that games are becoming online only forces countries and internet providers to improve their internet services?
11/08/2011 at 22:37 pipman3000 says:
HahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ISPs improving their service HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Awesome joke man :D
11/08/2011 at 22:51 Kamos says:
Governments everywhere will improve infrastructure in low-density population areas… because Diablo needs to be always-on. Suuuure…
11/08/2011 at 05:21 dsi1 says:
So basically… do not buy Diablo 3, got it!
11/08/2011 at 06:22 StuffedCabbage says:
Id software can join Blizzard in the act of kissing my arse!
11/08/2011 at 07:19 f4Ri says:
” If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome.”
This is absolutely disgusting. This prick isn’t interested in making games for the players but rather conforming players to the games. He might as well say “here’s shit, pay me for it, play it and don’t fucking complain”. The worst part of it is how he expresses a wish to “force people” into doing things they obviously don’t want to do.
11/08/2011 at 07:32 Buttless Boy says:
So I just spent an hour looking for Blizzard, Activision, and Ubisoft games that seemed interesting, intending to pirate them as a childish “fuck you” to the respective companies.
I couldn’t find any.
Maybe – and I’m just throwing this out there – maybe the problem isn’t piracy. Maybe it’s fucking awful games.
11/08/2011 at 07:36 Wozzle says:
“But why is always online better for us all, Mr. Willits?”
“‘RAGE HAS CARS”
11/08/2011 at 07:41 HermitUK says:
He’s entirely ignoring the reason why D3 has got an always on connection – the cash store. Once that was decided on, an internet connection and banning modding were needed to prevent cheats and duping breaking the economy Blizzard hope to establish. It’s not a particularly good reason for the requirement, but it’s the reason nonetheless.
Willits is talking as if every game should follow suit, which is nonsense. It puts you firmly in the Ubisoft camp of DRM. And yeah, maybe it does reduce your piracy rate (Though with no figures I doubt Ubi’s claim on that front), but it sure as hell costs you sales as well. Several Ubisoft games I’ve ignored in the past couple of years because of the DRM, especially after having picked up Conviction cheap and been booted out the game a couple of times when my net went shaky.
11/08/2011 at 16:33 InternetBatman says:
Their claims are highly suspect. Right now Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is the Fourth most downloaded (popular?/active? not sure what the top 100 list measures) pirate bay torrent. Portal II which is right below it has an easier to crack DRM (pretty sure) and was released later.
11/08/2011 at 07:45 Pilcrow says:
Since I depend on their ongoing service and I need to ask them everytime I want to play, this is nothing more than renting a game, not buying it.
11/08/2011 at 07:45 MartinNr5 says:
Because a game can’t update unless it’s always online, no sir!
Tim Willits is and has always been a douche. I’m actually surprised that id lets him talk to anyone outside the company at all.
11/08/2011 at 07:58 Screamer says:
Well I rather hope things goes to what happened to MW2 and BC2. PC gamers stayed away from MW2 with Activision’s “Whip the PC customer™” policy, and rather bought BC2. In the end there where more PC gamers playing BC than either of the console toys, and now BF3 is developed on the PC as a primary platform. So its easy…. don’t buy DIII…..and just watch the cinematics on youtube when they are available.
11/08/2011 at 22:42 pipman3000 says:
Watch the Let’s Play then buy Torchlight 2
11/08/2011 at 08:05 sexyresults says:
Long live indie.
11/08/2011 at 08:18 Robbert says:
I don’t really have a problem with always-on games, but I don’t like the reasons why Activision wants it. They want more control. They don’t want mods, they don’t want trainers, they don’t want friends sharing one copy so they can play together in a LAN. I’d have never been able to enjoy the wonders of Diablo 2 coop if I hadn’t been able to share my copy with my friends (not so they could play it on their own for free, but to play it with me. I don’t see that as piracy. Second hand sales are doing more damage)
11/08/2011 at 08:19 Eolirin says:
You all do realize that this is essentially how the Diablo 2 Realms worked, and they’ve just removed the offline and lan modes, right?
And that as a consequence, it’s quite likely that some of the game logic is on the servers, just like it was in Diablo 2, making the game next to uncrackable without also having battle.net emulation. This is not an attempt at always-on DRM; your characters are hosted on their servers, and there is server side code involved. That’s why you need an internet connection. The huge advantage to the server system is that hacks and dupes are a lot harder to do; you have server authentication and you can ban accounts and delete items. If anyone remembers Diablo 1, there’s a very strong reason why Blizzard moved in this direction with Diablo 2.
The decision not to include offline is one of trade offs, and those trade offs do cause problems, but there are serious benefits in terms of usability as well. They’re banking on the average user’s service interruptions being minimal, and the benefit gained by not having characters that can’t switch back and forth between multi and single which can use the full features of the game, is a pretty reasonable one. Whether that trade off is worth it is going to come down to the individual player, but Blizzard is making a decision based on what it thinks is best for the user experience.
11/08/2011 at 08:26 otomo says:
Really great stuff. Imagine a game on your PC which gets deactivated trough a remote control by the publisher because you fiddled with the game files to get that super awesome mod running. Aaaahh…wait, thats your fault….because mods are forbidden in the grand future envisioned by Mr (Big Brother) Willits.
11/08/2011 at 08:30 AMonkey says:
If you only this was Diablo 3s only problem…its not.
11/08/2011 at 08:40 darkrenown says:
my internet shorted out no less than 4 times in the space of 2 hours yesterday, that would be 4 times I would need to reload diablo 3.
11/08/2011 at 09:15 Brynden says:
i dont get this there hasnt been a game that was not cracked and this will not be the exception
so why are they investing money in these shitty DRM’s ??
11/08/2011 at 09:28 Thoric says:
That’s nice. Now cover the Path of Exile closed beta start.
11/08/2011 at 09:32 Yazoo says:
Stop bitching about that online stuff, nowadays you are online all the time, even in the streets, it’s just a normal evolution, learn to live with it.
11/08/2011 at 18:28 Wulf says:
Another day, another nurtured dickwad.
Not everyone has what you have. Remember that.
11/08/2011 at 09:45 Fox89 says:
Gee, if only there were some magical way to update your games automatically anyway, and STILL be able to play them offline. I think Valve came up with some crazy experiment that does that kind of thing already. Called ‘Steam’ or something… probably some crazy pipe dream that’ll never get off the ground.
11/08/2011 at 19:36 Enikuo says:
They can’t build that crazy dream with pipes, they need portals.
11/08/2011 at 09:51 luckystriker says:
After listening to Tom Francis’ podcast about the Diablo 3 demo, I’m so ready to play this game.
11/08/2011 at 09:51 merakai says:
Come on guys, this is what you’ve been waiting for all this time. Someone has finally created a WoW-killer!
11/08/2011 at 18:13 Wulf says:
That’s actually looking more and more like GW2.
DUN DUN DUUUNNNNN~!
11/08/2011 at 09:56 phuzz says:
Dear Blizzard,
I don’t think I’ve ever bought any of your games before, but I was sort of looking forward to DIII. However, even though I have access to an internet connection most of the time, being forced to connect just to play single player really puts me off your games.
tl/dr lost sale here.
yours
phuzz
11/08/2011 at 11:59 PetiteGreve says:
Bah, just get the console version you whiny little PC scums…
… soon announced ? :D
edit : aw crap, it’s almost announced :(
11/08/2011 at 12:31 stillwater says:
Gee, what’s next? Desktop computers that won’t work unless you have an “always on” electricity connection? Phones that only let you speak to people if you have an “always on” network connection? Cars that won’t let you go anywhere if you don’t put any petrol in them – not even for a bit?
Aaaaargh! All these crazy new ideas are scaring me! The inhumanity! The Brave New World! Help!
I can’t believe that there are luddites in the gaming community, of all communities, who are actually surprised and perturbed by this “always on” thing. In case you haven’t realised, fools, our whole lives are starting to require a constant connection to the net, and it’s only going to increase…..and increase quickly. If this is a problem for you, then Diablo 3 should be the least of your concerns.
11/08/2011 at 17:04 Khann says:
Diablo III is one of my many concerns. It just so happens that we’re commenting on a post talking specifically about how this problem relates to Diablo III .
Your analogies are also quite silly. Better analogies would be ones that actually concern the same issue:
Desktops that require you to be online to log-in.
Phones that require you to have a 3g connection to turn them on.
Cars that require you to have an internet connection to turn the key.
11/08/2011 at 12:42 Kalil says:
I will be willfully pirating this games as my field office situation means I can rarely rely on electricity let alone internet. Douchnozzles.
11/08/2011 at 12:48 slpk says:
I guess you HAVE TO look this confident if you’re making such a big dumb move.
11/08/2011 at 13:35 bill says:
When I moved to Japan I was stuck without internet for about a month until I worked out how to get it here. Then again, when I moved in the UK I was stuck without internet for a week because BT messed it all up.
Lesson – don’t move.
11/08/2011 at 13:53 Midarc says:
Y’know, I’m not sure if this offends me because I’m getting old, set in my ways and generally curmudgeonly, or if it’s another genuine step towards the complete surrender of the concept of ownership…
Anyway.
I get that it’ll allow easier drm enforcement, though people will find a way past that it’ll be less available to the casual pirate (at first).
I understand it’ll allow easier moderation of the ‘experience’ of playing Diablo III, though people will find a way to exploit systems within the rules to create problems.
I appreciate how this would make the developers jobs easier and trust them to take advantage of such functionality to improve the game, but I don’t trust the publishers/decisionmakers not to use this type of control to force us to find some things acceptable that rationally we wouldn’t.
(enforced product redundancy by lowering server performance/support to direct us towards purchasing a new iteration of a title. say diablo3+new expansion. for our own good, of course.)
The thing is, despite the above inarticulate vitriol, I’m still not wholly against it.
I’m willing to let them get the whole story out first.
It’s just not looking good so far.
They’re taking the unpopular step and everyone else who wishes they could is circling, rubbing their hands in glee and tweeting support that stops short of ‘go get those bastard customers’ only in content.
That just doesn’t fill me with a great deal of trust.
Maybe the idea behind dripfeeding this sort of thing is we’ll rage and get used to each little turd we have to swallow until we don’t care rather than choking on the whole shit sandwich at once.
11/08/2011 at 13:59 polychrome says:
we need to make them hear our voices NAO! when d3 is released it will be too late forever!! our cause will be lost if we don’t make a stand at this piont! and the only way to make them understand is that we visualize for them how friggin’ many we are. come on, let’s do this!
11/08/2011 at 14:21 Jolly Teaparty says:
Without wanting to say anything about this whole always-online issue, I would like to say it’s kind of weird the amount of effort being put into telling us how much we should like it.
11/08/2011 at 15:41 DrGonzo says:
The game will cost at least £40 on launch too. Blizzard seem to go out of their way to justify piracy and put you off actually purchasing their games.
11/08/2011 at 17:45 ASBO says:
I really need to calm down. Why am I getting so angry about a game I’m not even going to buy?
11/08/2011 at 18:01 dX9b99ge3W2 says:
It’s okay to be always connected to have patches and new features installed, but kicking me out if my connection drops or not starting if I’m not online (even if I already played hundreds of hours connected to the authentication server) is not okay.
11/08/2011 at 18:38 Wulf says:
Gabe once offered a lesson unto the publishers and the developers of the world.
Those who pirate games are just underserved customers. If you offer a far worse service than the pirates then ultimately the pirates will get your customers, because the pirates are offering a better service than you are.
If products are priced reasonably and not encumbered with useless forms of consumer shackling like always on DRM, then the game will sell better. By offering a poor service, people will do one of three things and this is exactly what everyone should expect:
1.) Ignore the game. (They’re too disgusted to be interested any more.)
2.) Pirate the game. (They feel pirates offer a better service.)
3.) Ignore the game and buy Torchlight II. (They feel that that game offers more of what they want.)
Each of these counts as voting with your wallet and a lost sale for Blizzard. I don’t encourage piracy but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do have piracy due to how they’re encumbering their players, because what pirates may figure out how to do is the following:
Allow this single-player game to be played offline.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they buy Torchlight II because of this very reason:
Players are allowed to play with other players of any region. The developer is not acting as though players from other regions are foreign filth.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t buy the game all together because they’re just sick of this particular genre by now and that this mess was enough to put the final nail in the coffin. Then again, there’s always indie, you could get Torchlight II instead! Even Bastion! Either or. Or, again, you could just not buy anything.
But I do encourage people voting with their wallet, because right now they’re just not offering a very good service, and that’s what they need to realise. We can’t tell them that treating us like brainless bitches is actually good business. If you value yourself at all, if you have any dignity or self respect, then opt for one of the other options. Or even just wait and pick it up in the bargain bin. But if you want to have any respect for yourself as a gamer, then… just don’t buy it on the day it releases and don’t preorder.
Food for thought anyway, no?
11/08/2011 at 19:01 Onaka says:
Clearly people who want to game should move out of rural areas, and people in countries where it is pretty much impossible to get a decent network connection should move into New York.
Wait. That sounds a little retarded. OH WAIT, HA HA, THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S UTTERLY FUCKTARDED!
11/08/2011 at 19:07 DudeBro says:
Et tu, Tim?
11/08/2011 at 19:19 Shadowcat says:
I heard
11/08/2011 at 23:49 Malixu says:
Can I just remind everyone of the multi-country Internet outage last year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11656851
I just moved house. On the day I got the keys, I called BT to sort out a line; it took them 3 days (first Monday after the Friday) to turn on the phone line. I then called my ISP to order ADSL (we’re not in a cabled area); they took until the following Friday to have the line activated. Except, activation didn’t work, and they had to send out an engineer. Total time offline; 12 days.
Trains do have Internet access sometimes, but it’s typically a very expensive extra, and last time I used it, it was unreliable and virtually unusably slow.
What’s the upside to this again?
12/08/2011 at 06:37 Kloreep says:
“Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated. Or there’s something new you didn’t know about, and you didn’t have to click away. It’s all automatically there.”
Um, what? There are already single player games that do those things. Difference is, they do them if they detect you have an internet connection. They aren’t an arbitrary requirement.
13/08/2011 at 05:50 Kronox says:
Why are people making a big deal out of this? just download a crack to play it offline…jeez
26/08/2011 at 16:00 panzer1990 says:
I guess all our troops in the middle east that have their laptops etc…screw em’ we can play stick ball with a grenade, thanks for the support wilts your a toolbox.
17/05/2012 at 21:34 StevenM1988 says:
So basically “fuck you, got mine”. Classy, Blizzard.
17/05/2012 at 21:40 obro says:
>Diablo III will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected.
Then they will have to accept that they will no longer be getting a dime out of me
18/05/2012 at 11:10 AMonkey says:
Ubisoft/EA does always online DRM (which they have done)=mass complaints
Blizzard does it=some people actually defend it
Yes its not the exact same situation, but its pretty damn close. Try justifying always online DRM on single player.